The Darkest Timeline
by nitefang
Summary: The opposite of light is dark. The opposite of birth is death. The opposite of existing is non-existence. However, there is no finite opposite of life, and so Hermione Granger must learn to live with that knowledge and all its caveats. (Rebooted again as of November 6th, 2015.)
1. Calling

**This is the third effing version of this story I've written, and I'll be damned if it's not the last. I'm so done with the way my brain just cannot deal with this story.**

 **So, yes, this is an even bigger overhaul than the last. But hopefully, it's the last and the best. I'd love if y'all who are genuinely invested in this story will drop me a message and tell me what they think—if only to assuage my anxiety.**

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 **1.  
Calling**

* * *

The cruelest punishment exacted on magical folk has been and always would be the Dementor's Kiss, whereupon a person's soul would be pulled from the body, leaving just a fleshly shell, with nothing but empty breaths to fill it. A lifetime imprisonment in Azkaban meant, at the very least, a sliver hope that a person would survive the experience with a relatively-intact soul. It meant that they might be able to move on from the world to the next plane of existence.

Souls were the keys to life. It moved people, moved between people, moved mountains. It was the strongest and the quietest aspect of a person's existence. It was a soul's call that could echo furthest, from one plane of existence to another.

The Veil, the ancient and mysterious stone archway set on a dais in the large, open chamber in the Department of Mysteries, had always been believed to be the doorway between planes. Its biggest secret was simple.

The opposite of light is dark. The opposite of birth is death. The opposite of existing is non-existence. Life, at its very core, has no opposite. So the dead, those who were long-thought to be lost forever, were in some capacity still alive.

And it was that thought that fueled the five-year research of Hermione Granger. Forsaking a desk in the Ministry proper, an apprenticeship at Hogwarts, and even a post at Gringott's, she had chosen to become an Unspeakable, holing herself up in the depths of the Department of Mysteries, with nary a hint of her goals to her friends.

Seven times she'd already performed spells that she thought would yank out a shaggy-haired, taciturn, immature, posthumously-acquitted convict. Seven times, she staggered back to her flat, feeling like she'd put her mind and soul through two consecutive Iron Man Triathlons.

But she wasn't done yet.

She'd lit so many candles that the cold, dreary Death Chamber constantly smelled like candle smoke. She nearly covered every surface of the stone dais in runes that it had grown rather worn with how many times she had to start over and scrub it all off. To no avail. Sirius Black was no closer to stumbling out of the Veil than Hermione was to becoming the Empress of the Galaxy.

But she'd finally figured it out. She'd given up on most of the prior research on the Veil, which had been mostly speculation anyway, and started anew. From ancient theories of life and death, she'd forged her own avenue to understanding the Veil, and it was what was going to make her eighth bloody attempt that much more successful.

The key to death was simply that it was still life, and Hermione was going to figure out how to get the annoying bastard if it killed her. The irony wasn't lost on her as she prepared her votive candles (again), a charmed dagger (again), and potion-infused paint for the floor (again). The idea was to reach an arm through the Veil and pull out a straggler, one who hadn't yet been unborn, but had rather tripped into the wrong plane of life and gotten a bit lost.

Granted, that had always been the general idea, ever since her first day down in the Department of Mysteries. Cheerful and eager to accomplish the impossible, Hermione rode on the hope infused in the worldwide post-bellum magical atmosphere. But even without working in the Time Room, she knew the toll seven years would take.

Seven years.

Seven years, but it was still easy to visualize the fantasy of Fred skipping through the silvery, billowing Veil, brushing off his shoulders and shooting her a devilish wink. Tonks would trip on nothing but still lob a cheerful greeting and a bright new hair color. And as he'd carefully step through, the warmth of Remus's kind smile would outshine his scars and shabby robes.

Hermione didn't expect to resurrect the entire battlefield from the second of May, but she'd hoped to bring someone back, ensure that her efforts weren't so futile, that maybe the fates weren't so decisive. That maybe it truly hadn't been someone's time.

Bringing Sirius back hadn't been solely for the sake of her goals, nor for Harry's. Harry, who remained in Grimmauld Place, chasing after two year old James Sirius with the eager help of eight year old Teddy Lupin. Hermione wanted to bring back Sirius for Sirius's own sake. He'd been cheated from life twice, but now he was the only one that had a legitimate chance of being brought back through the Veil.

As she lit the last candle and opened the first mason jar of her spelled paint, Hermione sighed. There was no point defending her actions and saying she wasn't trying to live in the past. When one had to spend more time with the dead than with the living, missing those who'd gone was an inevitability. "Contemplative" had long-since become her default setting. She spent most of her time in her own head than in the outside world.

With the last rune drawn, Hermione came to stand in front of the Veil and braced her hands on the stone arch. The silky mist billowed gracefully, its rhythm unchanging and uncaring of her sudden, close proximity. She felt no warmth, no cold, and no disturbance in the air.

She stepped back, taking a deep breath and letting it go slowly, steadying herself for another round, praying she'd make some sort of headway if she couldn't fully succeed.

Compared to the other rituals, which relied heavily on chanting or spell-casting, her new attempt depended on the quality of her meditative state, so she positioned herself on the ground, legs crossed, the backs of her hands resting on her knees with her thumbs and index fingers together.

Despite her hope and confidence, Attempt #8 was still very much an experiment, and exactly what she was supposed to be meditating upon was as nebulous as all the texts' explanations for the ancient magic of life. The theory had been to summon her own life force in order to seek out Sirius's and pull it out. Like magnetism. But she had no real way to test that theory without using herself, and it wasn't as if she was familiar with summoning her own life force.

So she picked up the knife in her right hand and set the blade in her palm, holding her hands close to the middle of her chest. Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing, slowing it down so she could feel her heart thrumming through her chest. Then she let Sirius's face bloom in her mind. It'd been so long that she'd forgotten certain details about his face, but his wide, crinkly-eyed grin and the stormy grey of his eyes were as vivid as the last day she'd seen him.

Hermione brought the blade to the meaty base of her thumb and sliced a short line down it. She set aside the dagger and fisted her hand, trying to push out as much blood as she reasonably could. Wincing as she rubbed her fingers over the pooling blood to coat her palm, she hoped this would be enough. Then she pressed her bloodied hand down on the rune painted in front of her— _raidho_ , for world rhythm or the dance of life.

And everything from that point forward, with blood on her palm on top of _raidho_ and Sirius's face in her mind, was a blur of greys and silvers. Her ears roared in waves, echoes of whispers rebounding along every crash. Apart from her sight and hearing, however, the rest of her senses were blocked, as if she was detached from her body.

Only one thing stood out in the haze—a faint voice that sounded nothing like Sirius.

"…Granger?"


	2. Waking

**2.**  
 **Waking**

* * *

"Oi. Pssst. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi. Oi—"

Hermione finally groaned, flinching away from the sharp finger poking her arm to the rapid-fire rhythm of the voice.

"I had Fred and George to wake me up for seventeen years, Hermione Granger, don't force my hand any further."

Hermione blearily opened her eyes, lids twitching at the soothing, mint-green ceiling and the matching walls, feeling like she hadn't slept for three days rather than having just awoken from who-knew-how-long. Her mouth was dry and tasted strange, and every breath felt eked out from under an elephant.

"Morning, sunshine," said a very pregnant Ginny Potter, glaring down at her where she stood on the right of Hermione's bedside.

Hermione took in the one hand on her hip and the cup of water in her other hand. She pushed herself up into a seated position against her pillows, arms wobbling with the effort, and sheepishly accepted the cup from Ginny.

Harry Potter, with his ever-messy black hair and eye bags, occupied the seat on Hermione's left, while Ron scowled from the second chair at the foot of the bed, armed with his Auror robes and a cup of coffee, fresh off his shift.

"Hi," muttered Hermione after she chugged the entirety of the cup.

"Explain," commanded Ginny, brown eyes blazing.

Hermione sighed. Her only viable explanation would be a breach in the non-disclosure contract she signed upon becoming an Unspeakable. Even still, it wouldn't be enough for any of her friends. What would she say? _Oh, don't worry. I was just trying to resurrect good ol' Sirius, and I may or may not have sent my soul into the Veil for a bit to try and find him in the beyond._

Hermione did the next best thing: "It's an occupational hazard, Ginny. Just like if Ron is hexed on a mission, if Harry caught a stray jinx during class, or if you took a wallop from a Bludger during a game."

"You say that as if we don't actively avoid taking those kinds of risks," sighed Ron, rubbing his forehead and shaking his head. "We don't willingly bleed out in the middle of the Department of Mysteries."

Hermione frowned. Bleed out? She glanced down at the faint, pale scar on the meat of her thumb, wondering how she could've bled out from such a small cut.

"Now, do you want to try that again?" asked Harry, cocking an eyebrow. "Hermione, what possessed you to think you didn't need all your blood in your body?"

Hermione constructed her best poker face, half her brain already trying to work out how she managed to drain herself so severely. "My job, Harry."

Ginny threw up her hands, spinning around and glaring at the walls as if beseeching them for patience. Harry took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Ron, however, only chuckled, likely unwilling to fight due to his tiredness.

"Last time I checked," he said, "your job involved books, not vampires."

"Whatever the hell your job is and entails, is it done?" demanded Ginny. "Have you proven what you wanted?"

Hermione fiddled with the cup still sitting in her hands, watching the single drop slide around the bottom.

"Hermione," began Harry, but was immediately interrupted.

"Did you know you've been out for two days?" snapped Ginny. "Did you know that not only were you unconscious when you were found, but you were also almost drained of your magic? That the Healer had to induce a coma to make sure your body and magic could fully recuperate? Circe's sake, I already have a two-year-old and an eight-year-old to look after. I don't need a twenty-six-year-old too."

Hermione wisely bit her lip to keep from rebutting with a petulant, _No one asked you to!_ Her relationship with her friends had been deteriorating; she was well aware. She'd passed over countless dinner invitations and girls' nights out for the leaps and strides she'd made in her research. Padma Patil, who worked in the Time Room, had already given her a kind warning that her work wouldn't keep her warm at night and give her the kind of love people needed.

Harry leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "We know you're married to your job—"

"Married to it, having an affair with it, cheating on both relationships with it, and occasionally sneaking off for a late-night dalliance with it," added Ron, sipping his coffee.

Ginny snorted, but Harry persisted, "—but you've got to see things from our side. The first time I see you in two weeks, and it's because you're in the bloody hospital."

Hermione winced. "In my defense, you work at Hogwarts now—"

"And I haven't seen you since our two-minute floo call a week and a half ago," said Ginny.

"I can't even remember the last time I saw you, and we work in the same bloody building," said Ron, scowling.

"All right, but you can barely remember what you had for breakfast yesterd—"

"That's beside the point, Hermione!"

Hermione tugged on one of the curls hanging over her shoulder and grasped as straws. "Well, I saw you four days ago."

"What? From across the bloody Atrium? That doesn't count!" barked Ron, the caffeine kicking in and making Hermione wince. "And when was the last time you came to Sunday lunch? Mum might strangle you instead of hug you when she sees you next."

"Look," said Harry. "You're obsessed, and it might actually kill you this time."

Ginny sat on the bed by Hermione's hip, shuffling to accommodate her pregnancy. "We're not asking you to tell us what you're doing down there. We're asking you to remember to have a life up here. Live in your head for too long, you might forget you've got a body."

Hermione swallowed and reached out to hold Ginny's hand. The younger woman snatched it immediately and held tight. "I'm sorry," said Hermione earnestly, meeting the eyes of her three closest friends. "I can't tell you what I'm doing, but I swear, it's good."

Harry met her gaze and pinned it down. "How good can it be if it's at the risk of losing you?"

A sharp knock at the door had Ron grumbling under his breath, Harry sighing, and Ginny smirking. When the door swung open, the cup in Hermione's hand cracked in her grip.

A pale, pointy nose preceded a pale, blond head, bowed over a pale green folder. Healer Draco Malfoy looked up and briefly made eye contact with three of the four Gryffindors, nodding as stiffly and politely as she had ever seen him. "Auror, Professor, Captain." Then his cool, grey eyes landed on Hermione, and his jaw twitched as if he itched to say something obscene or snarky, but he sucked on his teeth and turned back to his file.

"Good news," he said, speaking to his documents. "Your magic is fully intact and ready for a fresh wave of abuse."

Hermione snorted before she could stop herself. "How would you know that? I just woke up, and you haven't cast a single diagnostic spell." She tried to keep her tone mild, but she'd just woken up from a two-day coma. Tone control wasn't high on her list of priorities.

Malfoy looked up from his file to shoot her a disparaging look. "I made sure your magic was fully recuperated before pulling you out of the coma, Miss Granger. This visit is merely courtesy to tell you that you're free to go and to warn you that _bloodletting_ is no longer a common remedy for _anything_."

The response was tame by Malfoy's standards, surely.

"How did you end up in charge of my case?" she blurted out.

One of Malfoy's pale eyebrows rose, and he glanced at Ron, of all people. "I'm the on-call Healer for injured Unspeakables."

"Unofficially official, of course," said Ron dismissively, swirling his coffee cup idly.

"I work in a specialized branch of Spell Damage that deals with experimental, arcane magic," continued Malfoy blandly, seemingly sensing the onslaught of questions building under Hermione's glare. "Signed my own non-disclosure agreement with the Department of Mysteries Head, so whomever I treat for whatever reason will remain secret."

The on-call Healer had been a fairly important section of her orientation during her first several days as an Unspeakable. Though why they would choose Draco-sodding-Malfoy was just beyond her.

Grinding her teeth, Hermione sighed and tried to school her entire being as she set the mildly-crumpled plastic cup on the bedside table and cleared her throat. She unclenched her jaw. "Thank you, Healer Malfoy," she said, "for your kind assistance and your…care."

Looking deeply uncomfortable, Malfoy nodded curtly and walked right back out the room, not sparing any of them another glance.

Hermione didn't even get a chance to breathe before Ginny hauled up a small bag and tossed it right onto Hermione's stomach. "Get dressed. You're coming home with me for dinner."

"Ginny, I have so much—"

"Food to eat to make up for being in a damn coma!" snapped Ginny, glaring. "And I have to reintroduce Jamie to his godmother considering he may or may not have forgotten who you are by now."

* * *

Funnily enough (in an utterly unamusing way), Jamie remembered exactly who Hermione was and how much he adored tangling his little fists in her curls. In fact, he remembered her so much that he refused to let her (and her hair) go anywhere he wasn't. Much to Hermione's chagrin and Ginny's unyielding smugness, Jamie's attachment effectively kept her from work for another three days, and then it was time for Sunday brunch at the Burrow, where she was subjected to the same set of questions over and over. "Where have you been?" or "Why've you taken so long to visit?" and of course, "What do you think Harry and Ginny should name the new baby?"

Ron sniffed. "I still think 'Ronald Bilius' would do the job."

"The job of burdening my child with your name?" sighed Ginny, rolling her eyes.

Dinner had commenced without too much catastrophe, but Hermione had only half an ear in the conversation. Her thoughts kept wandering back to the ninth level of the Ministry. Her magic having been exhausted was understandable, especially since she'd used her blood in the ritual. She reckoned that as small as the cut may have been, it was likely the magic had pulled more blood from her in order to fuel the connection of life forces.

"She's right," said George, slapping a hand down on the table. "It's not nearly as good as 'George Fabian.'"

"A deal then," said Ron, narrowing his eyes at his sister. "What say you to 'Ronald George?'"

"He means 'George Ronald,'" corrected George, glaring at his brother.

But what Hermione couldn't understand was how everything had gone so wrong. She hadn't intended to completely leave her body, but she'd been caught in the magical riptide, barely even able to think about escaping, let alone _try_.

Harry, completely unfazed by the deterioration of the conversation, took a sip of his drink. "I'd rather name my child Toilet Seat Potter than any permutation or combination of your names."

"Any respect your poor child might have will go right down the drain," said George.

While Hermione was quite pleased to have made such headway to have something happen apart from blasting apart bits of the Death Chamber, she'd leapt and bounded a bit too far and nearly gotten herself killed. There was also the fact that the voice she'd heard wasn't even Sirius's. If there was a risk of her pulling out the wrong person, she desperately needed to re-evaluate the ritual.

"Harry, Ginny, what are you thinking of naming the kid?" asked Charlie.

Harry cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. "We're still throwing around a couple of options like 'Albus Severus' or—"

Hermione choked on the cauliflower she'd just eaten, and Charlie had to pound her back. Ron groaned, eyes shooting up to the ceiling as George's spoon clattered into his bowl. Fleur gaped at Harry, her mouth opening and closing with words she clearly thought better than to throw out. Even five year old Victoire paused in her meticulous decimation of her chicken to scowl at Harry.

"Are you sure?!" demanded eight year old Teddy.

George put his palms together beseechingly. "Harry, mate, friend, brother, _frater_ —just—you may as well stick to 'Toilet Seat.'"

"George!" snapped Molly, nervously glancing at Harry and Ginny with wide eyes and a frozen smile that was more of a grimace than anything else. "It's an honor to be named after two such…significant wizards."

Hermione dropped her utensils on her plate and glanced at Harry, who was blushing and scratching his ear, and then at Ginny, whose wide eyes were unfocused on her chicken thigh as she poked it listlessly. Finally catching her eye, Hermione glared.

Ginny winced. "So! Hermione, how's work been?!"

Thrown under the bus, Hermione pursed her lips and glowered at her friend as she fell back on her practiced, flat answer: "Productive."

"Apart from the fact that it's, you know, practically sucking the life out of you," said Ron dismissively, bouncing Jamie.

Hermione flushed and took a long drink to buy herself some time. "As do most other occupations," she replied, shrugging.

"Perhaps not as literally," said George, nonchalant in spite of the way he was pointedly staring at Hermione.

Oh, dear.

"We worry about you, dear," said Molly, seemingly unaware of the way some of her children were eyeing Hermione. "I just hope it's nothing too dangerous—"

"Or death-defying," added Fleur.

For the first time, Hermione realized that just because she wasn't often present with her friends, it was unlikely that she'd cease to exist for them. Leaving them to their speculations could often be more risky than being present for their interrogations.

Hermione felt the edges of her face burn and a cold sweat break out on her palms and the soles of her feet, but she managed to maintain her calm expression. "No, no, nothing like that. We've just mostly been riding on theories and conjecture and making minor experiments."

"So no fruitful _returns_ zen?" asked Fleur, smiling encouragingly.

George actually squeaked and coughed to cover it. Hermione sighed, leaning back in her seat as she tried to ignore Fleur. That was probably the price to pay for befriending the woman—facing her shrewdness and biting sense of humor.

Victoire had taken her damn-sweet time to be born, and Fleur had worked herself into a frenzy. In a fit of female camaraderie, Hermione had kicked out Bill and talked down Fleur from her French and English code-switched tangent about raising children in a world fraught with terrors. Her frantic hissing eventually calmed into low murmurs of what she'd once seen and hoped to never see again.

Having been trained in the high echelons of etiquette and subtle rhetoric, Fleur had picked up on the machinations of a tired, old wizard. His strategies had been no less than chess moves made in the name of the greater good, and Fleur topped him on her list of Most Feared Wizards. She had said there was something to be feared about people who could play others so easily and still be considered a paragon of good.

Hermione had understood Dumbledore's tactics, however. He had suffered through years of conflict and tragedy, and ultimately, his goal had been to end it all. But he played their lives like puppets. He valued primarily those who were loyal to him, people he could push and pull, and when they outlived their usefulness or when their loyalties shifted, he would sideline them.

It was Fleur who had pointed out Sirius's role, or lack thereof, during Harry, Ron, and Hermione's fifth year. He had been sidelined not because he was an escaped convict, but rather because his loyalties had remained solely with his godson and not with the old wizard. Because he couldn't be swayed or played by Dumbledore, he was essentially incarcerated again, boxed into Grimmauld. He was a wild card, set apart from the ordered deck. It was a dark and cruel view of Albus Dumbledore, but it was no less true.

And that was when Hermione apologized to Fleur, for her pettiness and her disdain, for the lack of respect she should've had for a Triwizard Champion. Fleur was wise, cunning, and resourceful, coming from a background steeped in intricate arts of both manner and beauty. It was why Hermione should have known Fleur figured out her job a long time ago.

"I really wish you could talk more about your work, 'Ermione," said Fleur. She daintily cut into her potato. "It must be inspiring to be surrounded by so much ancient magical theory."

"I was always interested in the purpose of having a room filled with brains, of all things," said George. "I guess you could say the room itself was…thoughtful."

"For Circe's sake," muttered Percy, rubbing the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.

"Ridiculous puns aside," said Angelina, rolling her eyes at her fiancé before turning to Hermione with a gleam in her eye that told the younger woman that it wasn't just Fleur she should've been worried about. "It's fascinating, isn't it? Such complex and intricate magic tying all the sectors together—time, prophecy, thought, love—"

"But zen zere is a section all for death, which we would 'ave thought was so straightforward," added Fleur. "What makes it so complicated to warrant such intense study?"

Hermione began to shovel food into her mouth to occupy her mouth and her attention.

"Now, you all know Hermione can't talk about her work," chided Arthur, glancing at Hermione worriedly.

"Fleur has a point, though," said Molly, staring off. "I've never given it much thought myself because we never think that death itself is full of secrets, in favor of contemplating the mysteries beyond it."

"What'd you mean, Mum?" asked Ron warily.

"Ron, dear, magic folk use words very carefully," explained Molly. "We must in order to properly execute spells, correct? So when the Department says they study death, they mean death, not the afterlife in the way we think death connotes."

"And ze closest connection zey have to such a thing would be ze Veil," said Fleur. "Do you know 'oo would know ze most about ze Veil?"

"The Department of Mysteries, where they study it…?" offered Charlie with a raised eyebrow.

"Draco Malfoy," said Fleur. "I'm sure ze Ministry possesses a wide array of books on old magic, but zey are too conservative. Zey cannot fully articulate and analyze ze depth of death itself because it is neizer black nor white but neutral. It cannot be restricted to innocent theory. Zat means delving into questionable sources that address such theories."

"Which can be found in the Malfoy Library," finished Bill, nodding in agreement. "That probably explains his position in St. Mungo's. He's had firsthand access to that material since he was born."

"Aunt Hermione, did you skip breakfast?" asked Teddy, staring at her in awe. "You must be starving."

Fleur smiled cheerfully at the way Hermione's cheeks swelled with food. Hermione only wiped her mouth and ruffled Teddy's hair before pointedly gesturing at the small mound of vegetables he'd cordoned off on his plate.

Later, as Fleur manned the kitchen sink to wash up, Hermione brought the last of the dishes to the counter and shot Fleur a pointed look, her lips pursed.

"Don't fret," said Fleur, accepting the stack of plates and giving Hermione a sympathetic look. "You 'aven't broken your contract. It was easy to deduce where you worked because of how it affected your life."

Hermione just sighed and shook her head. "Who else?"

"George," answered Fleur, turning on the water and waving her wand to set the cleaning charms. "Ginny, Bill, Angelina…"

Hermione groaned and dropped her forehead onto the older woman's shoulder. "Does everyone know?"

Chuckling, Fleur patted Hermione's head and smoothed out a few errant curls. "No, just us. Ze rest actively try not to think about it or simply don't put in ze effort."

Hermione winced. She was paid to research the mysteries of magic, not act. "My poker face needs work then."

Fleur laughed. "No, _mon cher_ , you'd need an entirely new face for zat."

* * *

The next day, Hermione decided it was past the appropriate recovery time and extracted herself from Ginny's worrying attentions to return to the Department of Mysteries. The part of her that had paid attention enjoyed the time off. It was nice to read people's expressions and gestures rather than translations of archaic theory. Listening to real voices and conversations warmed her more than the disembodied whispers of the Veil.

But her project plagued her no matter which way she turned. Jamie had pointed at one of the many pictures on the mantel above the fireplace and squealed, "Pads!" and Hermione had turned to the photograph of Sirius with his arm slung over Harry's shoulder. It killed Hermione to see that no matter how many people Harry surrounded himself with, there were almost as many ghosts.

Then there were the tendrils of fear that her last experiment had bigger repercussions than just draining her blood and magic. She'd half-expected to return to the Veil and see a tear through the misty fabric, visible proof of how badly she'd mucked everything up. Clearly, she had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the process since instead of bringing someone back from the dead, she'd nearly joined him.

She knew her theory of life's lack of opposition was the key to opening the doorway of the Veil, but for all intents and purposes, she had no idea what the keyhole looked like, let alone where it was. It was like trying to solve an arithmantic formula told in riddles and she had to answer it in iambic pentameter hieroglyphics.

Honestly, she and a lot of other people had seen it coming. Her friends were proud that she'd gained such a respected and prestigious position, but they all worried about the very risks that'd landed her in St. Mungo's—obsession. Even Arthur had taken her aside when she'd announced her new job and pled that she keep her head and heart in the right place.

It wasn't until she arrived in her office and sat down, staring at the maelstrom of work that she'd left behind in her haste to perform the ritual, that she realized her head and her heart were in what she thought was the right place. Arthur had meant "right" to be on the ground, on what was important and valuable. She'd meant "right" to be just, to be moral and fair. Arthur wanted her to be safe and to seize the second chance at life they'd all been afforded from the sacrifices that'd been made for the survival of the world. She wanted those who'd been unfairly stripped of their lives to have the true second chance to live it.

Oh, the importance of semantics.

No matter how hard she glared at Ron when he said it, he was right. She was a bleeding heart. From S.P.E.W. to Neville Longbottom; to the orphanage where she'd donated all her Order of Merlin, First Class earnings; to the Lupin Werewolf Effort; to the very project into which she was putting so much blood, sweat, and tears. When she loved and cared, she loved and cared from the bottom of her heart, and if that meant she'd bleed 'til her last breath, then so be it.

Blinking away the glassy sheen that warmed her eyes, Hermione swallowed and chuckled to herself, wondering at her own sense of duty. She wasn't trying to resurrect all those who they'd lost during both bloody wars, but she'd be lying if she said she didn't want to. Hell, she'd probably haul Cedric Diggory's arse back to life if she could manage it.

That had been the turning point in her childhood—that was when it all had begun to spiral out of control. The isolated explosions of conflict during her first, second, and third years had paled when the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament began the domino effect that rumbled through subsequent school years. And it made her want to bring Cedric back most out of them all, as if his death could turn it all back around.

He was a Triwizard Champion. He was chosen out of the entirety of Hogwarts to represent the school, and though he died, he'd be remembered as one of Hogwarts's best and brightest. He was a brilliant wizard, a talented seeker, and a good man. But that was what made it so much worse. He died not because someone loved him or hated him too much; he died simply because someone didn't care. Instead of going out a hero or standing up for something or someone, he was collateral damage. He was an unsuspecting bystander, and there wasn't much pride to be taken from that. And Cedric deserved more.

Hermione was roused from her musings when she heard a voice call out.

It wasn't unusual for her coworkers to collaborate and exchange ideas by wrenching open their doors and yowling at each other up and down the acoustically-blessed hallway. However, when the doors were shut, the offices were effectively soundproofed. With her door as firmly shut as it was, Hermione shouldn't have been able to hear a thing.

She opened the door and peered up and down the empty hallway. Everyone seemed to be busy, immersed in their projects behind closed doors. She was about to retreat into her office when she heard it again—a man's voice, though she couldn't distinguish what he was saying. The longer she listened, she realized it came from the one place she'd been avoiding, if only to keep from dwelling on her failures. Her feet, however, began to lead her straight to the innocuous wooden door at the end of the hall.

Hermione walked through the door and waited at the top of the steps, which led down to the stone dais in the middle of the Death Chamber, and she froze. She wasn't sure if it was her mind seizing up her nervous system or her muscles themselves refusing any sort of movement.

The silvery mist of the Veil no longer billowed from the stone archway, but was rather clinging to a figure with broad shoulders and a straight nose. It was as if a filmy curtain was draped over the tall, youthful man.

"Hello?" he called again, silencing the whispers as if their collective voices coalesced into his.

The door behind Hermione closed with a thud that had his gaze swiveling in her direction, giving her a better view of his features, which broke out into a symmetrical grin outlined perfectly in the mist. The cool temperature of the room was still as mildly uncomfortable as it had always been, but the way Hermione's heart raced made heat flare across her skin.

Because she remembered him.

Those broad shoulders had once been emblazoned with his last name as he soared across the Quidditch pitch, hurtling after a fleck of gold amidst thunderous cheers. The thick, chestnut brown hair was silvery, but had once glinted gold and red in the sunlight as he ran a hand through it. Hermione hadn't seen him often, even if they had lived in the same castle for four years. But he was unmistakable as she stumbled her way down to the Veil in a daze.

"Hermione Granger," said Cedric Diggory, grinning like she was the sun after years of night. "It's fantastic to see you again."


	3. Searching

**3.  
Searching**

* * *

There were no words—English or French—to articulate Hermione's reaction to seeing Cedric bloody Diggory standing in the Veil. She gaped at him from where she'd stopped on the edge of the dais, arms akimbo. In all the years she'd worked in the Department of Mysteries, his had been the last face she'd imagined.

"Last time I saw you, your mouth was running a novel a minute," said Cedric, his grin dialing back into a wry smirk that was no less infectious. "Ghost got your tongue?"

Hermione's lip trembled as she stared at him, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips as she tried to take deep breaths. A part of her had hurtled back ten years, back to when things hadn't gone quite so dark and there were booming cannons, bouncing music, and excessive confetti. But the echoes of better times faded at his grey hues and semi-corporeal appearance.

"Forget me already?" He cocked an eyebrow, his smirk warming into a smile. "I know we only ever had one solid conversation, but I thought I'd left a more lasting impression."

Hermione laughed thickly, wiping her hands down her face and sniffling. "I know who you are. I just—I don't understand."

"Well, I was hoping you'd have more of an explanation," he said. He gestured at her general appearance. "Considering you're the Unspeakable, and I'm the summoned dead."

Hermione cleared her throat and worked to wrench her mind from the past again, though her present and present situation weren't things she'd have a better time dwelling upon. "The summoned dead?"

"You called."

She blinked.

"Judging by that reaction, you either hadn't called or you called the wrong person," he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets and leaning against the archway.

"Right on both fronts," she murmured, sighing. She had her suspicions that her earlier musings on the Hufflepuff might have summoned him to her, but it made no sense. She'd spent hours thinking on all those they'd lost—even Hedwig, for Merlin's sake. If she could summon people by thought and mourning alone, Sirius should've been spat out from the Veil ages ago. Whatever her train of thought might have meant to Cedric's presence, however, she wasn't about to voice it yet. "I've been working down here for five years, and this is the first time something substantial has happened. You're not like the ghosts at Hogwarts, are you? Of course not, you can't seem to drift out of there."

"What've you been trying to do?"

"Bring back Sirius Black," she answered offhandedly, missing his incredulous look as she continued to mumble to herself about how she could've managed to haul Cedric to the edge instead of Sirius all the way out.

"The serial killer?!" he yelped, pushing off from the arch to stand in front of her again. "The Azkaban escapee?! The one who bloody betrayed the Potters?! Granger, why?!"

"He was framed," she answered, bored with the old spiel. "His name's been cleared. So far, he's been the only one to have fallen through the Veil without having died properly, and I'm trying to take advantage of that technicality to bring him back out through the Veil."

"And what exactly did you do that resulted in summoning me?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

She should've taken her cue from the serious expression that came over Cedric's face. As she gave him the abridged version of her ritual, his face darkened until he was glaring so deeply that it seemed to be almost carved into his skull.

"You threw your bloody life essence…out into the nether…as bait?" he gritted out through his teeth.

"You're making it sound as if I was recklessly—"

"Because you were! You're not fishing, Hermione!"

"By all means—tell me more about how five years' worth of research is wrong! Sirius doesn't belong on that plane, so he would be—"

"I don't know what kind of natural laws you think death operates by or what texts you've been reading and who the hell wrote them, but they've got a ton of shite wrong—"

Hermione scowled. "How could you possibly know—"

"For one thing," he snapped, "my mother was an independent researcher for the arcane, and I was a nosey kid. Two: I'm dead. Ask me again how I could possibly know anything, and we'll see how bitter your chewing will be when you eat your bloody words."

Hermione balked at him, her mouth opening and closing in disbelief, though her tongue itched with a need to lash out again.

"What you did," he continued bracingly, his voice echoing out through the cavernous room, "was risk your soul on a fishing trip for a goldfish in the middle of the Pacific. You'll be lucky if I'm the only one that's popped up. You're trying to haul what is, for all intents and purposes, an undead man through a window to another plane of existence."

"Wait, what? A window?"

"Nothing comes in or out, and what's already in there won't easily come out," continued Cedric. "Especially if it doesn't belong there and even more if it's not an actual exit—"

"Like overcompensation!" cried Hermione, looking like she was on the verge of tearing her hair out. "That's why I couldn't summon him and why he couldn't come to me—none of it was enough! I was hoping it was more of a free-for-all, not—"

"And another thing—I've seen everyone who's died since my own bucket was kicked, and Sirius Black wasn't one of them. He's not around here."

Hermione nodded understandingly, staring off as she began to pace in front of the Veil. "I ascertained he'd be somewhere in limbo because of the circumstances of his death, somewhere between your plane and mine. I was hoping because of that, he would've been perpetually repelled like magnets of the same charge, but instead, he's more trapped than anything."

Cedric sighed and stretched his neck, his shoulders relaxing. Hermione wiped her hands down her face and took a deep but shaky breath.

"I could actually pull him out this time," she muttered, her mind racing.

"You're welcome, sugarplum."

Hermione broke out of her thoughts to study his silvery figure and the smirk prominent on his face. "Sugarplum?"

"Fred and I are on good terms," he answered, shrugging.

Her heart nearly stopped beating, and her breath stuttered on her trembling lips. "Fred?" she croaked. "You've seen him?"

He grimaced, his head swaying left and right as he debated his response. "Seeing feels like the right term, but it doesn't really work that way. It's more like…we're all aware of each other, but there's not a lot of senses involved. It's hard to explain—a kind of you-have-to-be-there concept, you know?"

"But you can communicate?" she asked quietly, stepping closer to the Veil and shivering in the cold. "What about the others—like Remus and Tonks and Dennis Creevey and—"

"They're at peace, Granger," he said decisively, pushing off from the archway to meet her gaze steadily, certainly. "It's okay."

She nodded and raked her fingers through her hair again. "Okay. Okay."

"Question—are you still 'Granger,' by the way?" he asked.

She blinked at his sudden change of subject, a smile tugging at her lips. "What are you trying to do, Diggory? Catch up on the gossip?"

"Considering I've been out of the loop for so long, I've been dying to catch up," he answered, grinning.

"Still very much a Granger," she said, holding up a ring-less left hand with a chuckle. "Much to my mother's and Molly Weasley's disappointment."

"What about your own disappointment?" he asked.

She shook her head, her smile fading. "I had other things to worry about."

Cedric nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. It still fell back into place perfectly. "So what's on the agenda now?"

"I have to find a couple of tethers," she answered, her hands on her hips as she stared off into space again. "People who share the same blood relationship to Sirius to stand on either side of the Veil in order to tether him to one place long enough for me to pull him out."

"One person on my side and one on yours?" he asked. "Mirrors?"

"Yes," said Hermione, tapping her lip. "I can only use cousins, I suppose. Andromeda Tonks would work—"

"Along with who? Bellatrix Lestrange? No, Granger, I'm not going to even try and communicate with that woman, let alone work with her to figure out how to bring her to this surface so you can use her."

"All things considered, we're going to absolutely avoid bringing that woman into the fold—especially since she's the one who sent him tripping into the Veil to begin with," muttered Hermione, wincing.

"Merlin," breathed Cedric. "They were _cousins_. But I suppose that's the work of a madwoman. I'm thinking of another Tonks."

Hermione lit up. "Nymphadora? Of course, that'll—" Her face fell again. "I'd have to use Draco Malfoy. They're both firstborns of Sirius's cousins."

Cedric winced. "They're the best mirrors you've got, and the stronger the mirrors, the stronger the tether."

Hermione nodded slowly and the direction of her head movement suddenly turned horizontal as she shook her head. And then she was laughing. "Five years—five bloody years—and all it took was a seventeen year old boy to waltz back into my life and turn all of my research over on its head within a matter of ten minutes."

"If it makes you feel better, I've literally got inside information"

"—wrote and performed nigh on a hundred rituals and nearly bled to death—"

"Wait, what?!"

Hermione only shook her head and continued to chuckle, wiping away tears she didn't even register crying. "So, you'll help me, Diggory?"

Shaking his head and still looking mildly worried, Cedric sighed. "Of course. Talk me through your plans, Unspeakable Granger."

"Sure you can keep up, Triwizard Champion?" she asked, wiping her hands down her face and grinning.

"My favorite subject was Ancient Runes, witch. Don't test me."

* * *

The door to the mint-green and cream exam room closed with a soft whoosh and click as Healer Draco Malfoy walked in, choosing to speak to Hermione's chart again rather than to Hermione herself. "You're cheerful."

Forever the little stormcloud in a sunlit meadow, that one.

"If we can get through this quickly, you'll be rid of me and my cheerfulness soon enough," said Hermione, wincing as she sat up straighter on the exam chair and folded her hands on her lap.

"If you hadn't decided you had more than enough blood to spare, we wouldn't be here in the first place."

Hermione scowled but bit her tongue to let Malfoy go about his business, still refusing to make eye contact with her. He waved his wand every which way, casting diagnostic spells that made her warm, cool, or tingle. When he cast the last spell—which made her briefly glow purple—he stowed his wand up his sleeve and referred to her file again.

"Your silence leads me to believe I'm in all good health," she said, picking at her cream-colored skirt.

"I can only gauge your physical wellbeing, not your mental stability," he answered evenly. "I can help you if you're bleeding out in the middle of the Death Chamber, but there's nothing I can do to stop you from going back in there."

Hermione blanched but did her damndest not to show it. "Who said I worked in the Death Chamber?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Don't insult my intelligence. Judging from the placement of your wounds, you bled intentionally. None of the other chambers in the Department of Mysteries would demand something so macabre. Not to mention you've been entirely too melancholy these past few years to be working anywhere else."

"Weren't you just the one complaining of my cheerfulness?" countered Hermione, sneering, her chin rising of its own accord.

"In spite of its reputation for dreary weather, the sun does occasionally shine in London," he said. "You've isolated yourself and grown melancholy because you think you're so great and powerful that you've bypassed reversing time and went straight for trying to reverse death itself. And now you're realizing that you're wrong."

And there was the sneering Draco Malfoy she knew.

"Just like how you think you can save lives to make up for deaths you caused?" she asked, her face impassive despite the rage that suddenly bubbled up. "As long as you don't pretend to know me, I won't pretend to know you."

Malfoy finally met Hermione's gaze full-on, steel grey on roiling brown. When he spoke, however, his voice returned to its courteous calm, taking on an air of dismissal. "Well, Miss Granger, do try to avoid death before you discover how to come back from it. It'd be an unspeakable tragedy."

Hermione smiled at him insincerely. "Why, Healer Malfoy, I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

Malfoy scowled and turned to wrench open the door with one hand. "It seems your parents failed to pass on the inclination for self-preservation, so the task must fall to me. Good day."

He was three steps past the threshold of the door before Hermione clamped her eyes shut and sighed, immediately regretting the utter deterioration of their conversation. Her shoulders slumped and she slid off the exam chair.

"Malf—Draco, please wait," she called out.

The door was about to swing shut, but it stopped only an inch from the frame. "What?" she heard him say from behind the door.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out.

The door opened a bit, and his head slowly leaned back in with an expression of disbelief and mild irritation.

"I—I'm sorry for instigating anything and stirring up old bitterness," she said contritely. "I know how much of your demeanor is your personality and how much of it is what I provoke. I can't deny your capabilities as a Healer, and it was cruel of me to demean your motivations. That's the very kind of bitter, unchanging attitude we fought a bloody war against, and here I am, perpetuating it."

The door opened, and he walked back in. Then he shut the door and crossed his arms over his chest. "I take great pride in my job, Granger. I assure my patients a well-rounded diagnosis of their health. I need to know about their jobs, their homes, their lifestyles, and every other pertinent facet of their lives to make sure my job to heal them is unimpeded. I'm not the youngest full-fledged Healer in this bloody building for nothing. I don't appreciate my intelligence being questioned by someone who seemingly forgets that the Hippocratic Oath and patient-Healer confidentiality spans both Wizarding and Muggle medicine."

Hermione could only sit there and blink at him—though she managed to school her shock into an expression of contemplation so as to not warrant any offense.

Regardless of how much they'd grown, it was entirely too easy to forget that Draco Malfoy was not exactly the spiteful little git he'd been—regardless of the lingering, blurry image of him standing, staring down at her fearfully as she was _Crucio_ -ed by a lunatic. In all honesty, it wasn't difficult for Hermione to bridge the gap between teenage Malfoy and the Healer that sat in front of her. He was the poster boy of the reformed pureblood elite, and she could easily plot out the progression. They'd all walked away from the war with learnt lessons, loss paradoxically weighing on their shoulders. Draco Malfoy was no different.

He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and then looked at the floor. "I'm sorry for pushing," he said tightly.

Something warm settled into her chest, and she gave him a tentative smile, one that made his eye twitch in spite of the awkward nod he gave her.

"So what do you want?"

Hermione paused. "Pardon?"

"I have no doubt that your Gryffindor sensibilities and your bleeding heart led you to our little moment of camaraderie two seconds ago, but I can tell you want something. What is it?"

Hermione wiped her hands down her face and groaned, silently grateful that she wasn't one to wear makeup, which would likely be smeared left and right with the amount of times she touched her face. And then it all came spilling out, seemingly flooring Draco enough to push him into the nearby chair as he listened more intently than she'd ever seen him. He listened to her explanation—introduction, content, conclusion, and request—without interruption or change in expression. It was a testament to the growth that Ron had attested to.

Draco didn't speak for a solid three minutes, instead studying the floor, the ceiling, the wall, and finally her face.

"Fine," he said. "I'll help you bring back the mass murderer—"

"He was cleared of all charges, damn it!"

"—though I highly doubt mine will be the first face he'll want to see when he steps out from a nine-year limbo."

Though slightly indignant on Sirius's posthumously-acquitted behalf, Hermione brightened significantly, her previously-disintegrating tentative smile blooming into a full-fledged grin. "Honestly, he probably wouldn't care. He might even kiss you for helping to save him."

Malfoy grimaced. "Now I know to take ten paces to the left as soon as I see first hide or hair of him." Then he fixed her with another meaningful stare. "As far as what I know about the Veil—don't worry about it, Granger. Now get out. I have other patients. Owl me with a day, and I'll clear my schedule so we can resurrect your favorite criminal."

* * *

Without much preamble, Cedric appeared in the Veil in a swirl of mist, his hair still perfectly windswept. He and Hermione exchanged happy grins, and Draco rolled his eyes, wiping his hands on a napkin. The Veil was successfully surrounded with candles and painted runes.

"Malfoy," said Cedric, nodding.

Draco returned the gesture stiffly. "Diggory. How're things?"

"Nothing new," said Cedric, shrugging. "Things are pretty dead on my end."

Hermione snorted and wished she could hit him with a rolled up newspaper the way she would've with Ron and Harry. "Are you ready on your side?" she asked him instead. "Tonks is there with you?"

"Aye, in a way," replied Cedric, glancing over his shoulder. He turned back to Hermione and gave her a serious look. "Are you sure you're ready for this, Granger?" asked Cedric, his smile waning in the face of his worry.

Hermione answered him with a little helpless shrug, and then she took a deep breath and pulled the familiar ornamental dagger from the bottom of her canvas bag. She waved a hand to wandlessly and wordlessly light the candles.

"Oh, hell, not with this shite again," groused Draco, throwing his hands up and shaking his head.

"What? What is it?" demanded Cedric.

"Oh, she didn't tell you that part of the ritual?" asked Draco. "We're gonna have another bout of bloodletting."

Cedric stiffened, and his eyes slid onto Hermione. "What?! Is that how you nearly bled to death—"

Hermione ignored him and stepped up to the Veil, where Cedric had his hands on his hips and was shaking his head sternly.

"No. No, no, no—"

She rolled up her sleeve and sliced a thin line down her forearm.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Granger!" cried Cedric exasperatedly.

"I don't take house calls, woman, I hope you know that," called Draco. "This isn't medical attention to-go."

Disregarding both Cedric's and Draco's grumblings, Hermione began to whisper, taking the same volume and subtle cadences of the whispers of the Veil. The candles flickered, and the light they emitted began to shift direction toward the stone arch, warm magical spotlights that highlighted the silvery undulations, making Cedric flicker in and out.

The Veil suddenly rippled—like a pool of water rather than a misty fabric—and Hermione lunged forward, blood dripping down her hand and snaking around her hand, the whispers still falling from her lips and culminating into one discernable name: "Sirius."

Cedric's hands shot up to stop her. "Hermione, don't touch—"

But the ripple breached right as Hermione grabbed for it. A hand broke through the silvery Veil—a pale, strong hand as corporeal as a punch in the face. Hermione closed her own bloody palm around it just as tightly as it gripped her.

And so she pulled.

The hand was followed by the rest of its arm, ensconced in an expensive smoking jacket, followed by broad shoulders, and a head of black hair. Sirius Orion Black tripped back through the Veil and crash-landed onto Hermione, gray eyes wide and mouth agog. Only a heartbeat later, the familiar face she'd been staring at had closed the distance, and his lips were on hers.

His beard and mustache were softer and more ticklish than she'd anticipated, a supplement to the warmth and the tingles that seemed to radiate from his surprisingly soft lips. He pulled back, hovering over her on his elbows and grinning, and though he'd lifted most of his weight off her chest, something else settled there instead. His breath still smelled faintly of cigar smoke and firewhiskey, his eyes were still a bit gaunt and sad, and his hair was just a bit shaggy—just as she remembered him.

"Hermione?" he breathed, blinking those familiar, clear grey eyes and finally recognizing who he'd just kissed. "Hermione Granger?"

Her smile was just a little awkward, but the emotion behind it was enough. She squeezed his shoulders and shook her head, trying not to cry. "Hello, Sirius."

"You're two for two in saving my life, did you know that?" His face split into the happiest grin she'd ever seen on his face.

"Didn't realize we were keeping score, but you should know I don't like leaving loose ends," she replied with a shrug and a sniffle.

He let out a bark of laughter, and the world tilted again, this time so he was on his back and Hermione was crushed to his chest as he reveled in his return.

"Oi!" cried Draco, rushing to her aid. "Let go of her—what're you doing?"

"Relishing in my resurrection, complete with a pretty bird on top of me," answered Sirius cheerfully, still grinning at the ceiling of the chamber and hugging Hermione tightly so she had no choice but to rest her head on his shoulder.

"Then we'll get you a bloody owl later!" Draco pinched Sirius's arms to release her and hauled her back onto her feet. "Still a fucking lunatic, I see, Black."

Hermione brushed herself off, nodding her thanks to Malfoy, and gently disengaging herself from his grasp to tiptoe back to Sirius. He'd folded his arms behind his head and crossed his ankles, seemingly content to lounge on the cold stone floor. "Sirius, how do you feel? Can you stand?"

At that prompting, Sirius grinned widely and pushed himself up to his feet. He even jumped a few times for good measure. "I feel great—a little sore, but great!"

He lunged forward and scooped up Hermione into a spinning hug that had her latching her arms around his neck and burying her face against his shoulder as she screeched in fright.

"For fuck's sake, Black, try not to give your bloody savior a heart attack!"

Sirius gently set Hermione back onto the ground and peeled her off his chest to cup her face in his hands. "Hermione Granger, you glorious, wonderful woman. I owe you my life, my firstborn, and the rest of my bloody descendants."

"Before you get to any kind of procreation, you need to get looked over," said Draco, eyeing Sirius warily as he released Hermione's face to sling an arm around her shoulders and drag her up against his side securely. Surprisingly, she didn't feel the least bit restricted or disgruntled—which should've given her cause for mild concern if she'd thought more about it.

"I'm not letting you anywhere into the greater Wizarding area only to have you keel over because your organs aren't in the right places."

Sirius seemed to realize he was being addressed by none other than Draco Malfoy, and he regarded his young cousin with confusion and not a little bit of disdain. "Malfoy."

Draco frowned. "Black."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Sirius, Draco is a Healer now. He works at St. Mungo's and has treated me before."

"For what?" asked Sirius, frowning down at her worriedly.

"Er—occupational hazards," she answered. "But you can trust him, I swear. I'd rather not bring you back just so you can die properly of something else."

Sirius seemed neither completely against nor completely in favor of going anywhere with his blond cousin, but he sucked on his teeth and didn't release Hermione.

"You are absolutely not going to Grimmauld Place to see Harry, Ginny, and James Sirius without getting looked over by a Healer," said Hermione adamantly.

Sirius suddenly brightened and his wide grin returned. "James Sirius?" he echoed. "He named his son after me?" Then he paused and frowned. "Wait, he's still living at Grimmauld Place? The bloody hell's wrong with the boy?"

"Too many _Avada_ 's to the face, I'd say," said Malfoy.

Sirius turned to him with a look that clearly showed he was bordering on glaring or laughing at his cousin. "Right. Young Malfoy, lead the way." He tucked Hermione's arm into the crook of his elbow and nearly dragged the other two out of the Death Chamber in his haste to see his godson and his namesake.

Hermione chanced one backward glance to the Veil just in time to see Cedric appear, one hand in his pocket and his other waved in goodbye, his good-natured grin taking a proud tilt.

* * *

Sirius sat through a battery of tests during his brief stay in St. Mungo's, and upon his release, he practically dragged Hermione through the Floo to land straight in the middle of dinner at Grimmauld Place. There, Hermione was practically carried back and forth, heralded as the Woman Who Slapped Death In the Face. Ginny and Fleur shot her meaningful looks, making it clear they'd known it had been her project all that time.

Though Sirius was loathe to leave her side, he was caught in a conversation with Arthur, and Hermione was able to escape to the garden for a much-needed breath of fresh air. It was there that Harry managed to find her and haul her into a hug that said everything she knew he couldn't put to words. He pulled away with tears on his face and a smile that hit her straight in her soul. She put her hand on his cheek, and he kissed her forehead.

And she left.

Hermione returned to the Death Chamber, if only to clean up her mess. It was a bit of a low note to end such a momentous day, but it was a quiet note that felt right.

As she stepped in, she realized she'd forgotten what the chamber had been like—what it was like without Cedric's company. The silence echoed even louder than his familiar voice.

Hermione rubbed her hands together and flexed her fingers, trying to shake off the tremble in her extremities. She picked up the discarded canvas bag and began plucking candles from the circle. Typically, Hermione enjoyed a comfortable silence that left her to her thoughts, but for the first time, it was too much.

Almost instantaneously, the whispers of the Veil, which had paused when Sirius had been spat out, quieted once more in its telltale way, signaling the return of her partner-in-crime. Cedric leaned against the side of the stone archway, grinning, and began to clap.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but gamely acquiesced to a single curtsy. "Thank you, by the way," she said, "for helping me with all this."

"You must be joking," said Cedric. "No right-minded soul would pass up the opportunity to work with the Brightest Witch of Her Age to defy the laws of death itself by exploiting a loophole. I feel like I'm part of your team."

"My team?" echoed Hermione, cocking an eyebrow as she continued to collect the candles.

"Yeah, you and Ron and Harry, running around the school, always caught up in the weird shite that happened my last four years there," said Cedric. "I wish I could've gotten to know you better, if only to have an answer for all the rumors that flew around about you three."

She stowed the last candle in the canvas bag and turned to the bloodstain in the middle of the circle, marked only by circular wax residue. "Merlin forbid you befriend me for my personality and companionship."

Cedric winked. "That'd just be a pleasant bonus."

Hermione shook her head, smiling. But she couldn't put all of her heart into it. She scuffed the dried blood with her heel, hoping it'd chip off like the wax, but the stain had set into the stone.

"You know, if I had the chance, I would've asked you to the ball."

Hermione blinked, but was otherwise unfazed as she continued to kick at the stain. She didn't even bother to look up at him. "Of course you would've," she said indulgently.

"Really, though," he insisted. "If I'd talked to you even once—"

"What difference would that have made?" asked Hermione, briefly roused from her hushed solemnity to stare at him incredulously.

Cedric crossed his arms over his chest. "I'd know that I would've enjoyed any amount of time with you and that you wouldn't have glowered at me and jinxed me out a high window just for asking."

"No," said Hermione, scrounging in the canvas bag for the old rag she remembered leaving in it. "I would've just laughed at you."

"You're not laughing at me now," he said.

Hermione sighed and pulled out the rag. "Whatever your inclinations to ask me, you were a bloody Triwizard Champion of Hogwarts. Harry took the crowd's need to stigmatize, so the pressure to be perfect was on you," she said, turning back to the stain and scrubbing what she could. "You were fortunate the girl you wanted to be your date was someone everyone thought you looked good with—not Harry Potter's swotty best friend, who could barely be considered feminine."

"You let Viktor Krum consider you feminine."

Hermione stopped and just looked at him. Had it been any other day, she might've had to keep from cracking a smile, but she had to force herself to even try. It came out as a grimace.

"Granger, are you all right?" he asked, his wry smirk disappearing as his eyebrows drew together.

"Of course," muttered Hermione. "Just feeling…a bit off, I suppose."

"Off?" he echoed.

Hermione leaned closer to the stain, scrubbing a bit more vigorously. "Don't worry. It's just been a long day."

"Hermione," said Cedric, his voice more serious than she'd ever heard it. "Hermione, stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Why aren't you using magic?"

Hermione paused, frowning, but then continued scrubbing again. "Don't worry about it."

"Hermione."

She finally stopped, straightening up and huffing impatiently. "What, Diggory?"

He met her irritated stare with his steady gaze. "Let go."

Hermione looked down at her trembling hands. The longer she watched the minute shakes, the dry cracks on her knuckles, the pale sheen of her skin, the phantom sting of old cuts she'd had to make for previous rituals…

She unsteadily sank down to sit on the floor, letting the canvas bag slide from her shoulder. She took a deep, tremulous breath.

"Why are you crying?" asked Cedric softly, crouching down to her level, though she was still several feet away.

The stained rag slipped from her fingers as Hermione reached up to feel the wet tracks on her face, wondering when that had begun. Lifting her arm, she wiped her tears on the sleeve of her Unspeakable robes. "D-Do you know why I did it?"

Cedric shook his head, swallowing and watching as she tried and failed to stem the flow of tears and only making them fall faster until she was crying full-tilt.

"For Harry," she murmured. "I did it for Harry."

"And you did do it," said Cedric. "You brought back his godfather and gave the man a third chance—a _real_ chance. So why are you upset?"

"Harry was an absolute wreck fifth year," she said, shaking her head and sniffling. "And when Sirius died… He was just so angry and so sad, and I couldn't—" She wiped her nose. "I couldn't stop feeling so guilty."

"Of what?! Did you kill him?"

"He just—" She gritted her teeth and growled, her hands tightening into fists. If it was out of irritation at him or anger at herself, she wasn't sure, "—annoyed me so much, this man who was twenty years our senior and somehow still fundamentally younger than us, and Harry was supposed to look up to him as a father figure?"

Cedric grimaced and shrugged. "An understandable sentiment, I'm sure, but a man who spent nigh on twelve years in the most detestable prison on the face of the earth would hardly have the best parenting skills…"

"And I should've had the empathy to at least consider that!" cried Hermione, wiping her hand down her face as the tears—just—wouldn't—stop—falling. "Harry had lost his family all over again, one of his last tethers to his father, and it nearly broke him. And I tried to console him whilst hating myself because the last words I exchanged with Sirius were over an argument! He was always trying to be Harry's brother, to be a friend, as if he was working off muscle memory from what it was like when he was with James.

"When he died, I hated that I resented his position in Harry's life. I tried to be happy—really, I did. And in the moments where he protected Harry and let his paternal instincts come through his immaturity, I was pleased, but then he'd go and do something stupid like instigate a fight with Professor Snape or brood in his room or drink about how he couldn't get out and be more useful, and I'd be so annoyed. And I hate myself for that. I hate myself for not thinking on his terms—"

"Yes, all right, but he's here now," interrupted Cedric, ducking down a bit so he was within Hermione's line of sight, cutting her off from where she'd been glaring at the floor. "You've got all this time to sit down and talk with him and patch things up."

Hermione shook her head, hiccupping. "You don't understand."

"Then _make_ me."

She looked up at him—at the face that would've remained wholly unchanged if it weren't for the age reflected in his expressions. "I'm afraid that my attempt at fixing the future to patch up the past is going to backfire, and we're going to lose Sirius all over again."

Cedric dragged a hand down his face as he stared at Hermione despondently.

"Having him back reminded me of what it felt like to lose him—does that make sense?" she asked, her voice dropping to a pained whisper. "I'm stuck in this in-between of remembering the pain, being happy that he's back, and losing my mind in worry that he'll be gone again."

"Hermione—"

"I'm so tired," she murmured softly through the fresh wave of tears. "Being down here is limbo for me, Cedric. I poured myself into my work to bring him back, but I'm not even going to lie to myself anymore. If I could haul out Remus and Tonks and Fred and Snape and you—I would. In a heartbeat. And because I held onto that prideful, hopeful, little string of thought, I didn't let go. I didn't let go of any of you. I've been stuck down here, trying to keep the dead alive, and now…I think I'm dying in the process."

She shivered, pulling her robes closer around herself. And even though there was a spirit right there with her, one that she'd never imagined being able to talk to again, even though she'd spent years by herself in that chamber in far more haunting circumstances, even though she'd just managed to defy the laws of life and death, she felt cold and scared and alone.

In the depths of the Ministry of Magic, in the dark recesses of the Department of Mysteries, Hermione Granger sat in the middle of the dais in the Death Chamber and felt the icy whisper of death, her magic drained and leaving her just a touch away from being a Muggle. And she wondered, long after Cedric's desperate reassurances faded into the moments of yesterday and the days after, exactly how long she'd been dying in that room.


	4. Aching

**I re-uploaded the previous three chapters (again) because this is my third reboot of this story. So if you want to go back and re-read them, be my guest. If not, this chapter picks up where it'd left off before, so you're not losing information.**

 **Sorry I'm not more sorry for doing this. The mind of a writer is a stormy place.**

* * *

 **4.  
Aching**

* * *

"Hermione."

She stirred, the voice muddled as though speaking underwater.

"It's been long enough, Granger. Up and at 'em."

There was no sunshine to glare through her eyelids, and she was swaddled comfortably in her duvet. The room was cool and quiet, in spite of the annoying voice tugging her from the warm swath of unconsciousness.

"I see your eyeballs spinning around under those lids, woman. Wake the fuck up."

Hermione peeled open her eyes and immediately became aware of the the weariness that saturated her muscles and made her bones sore. Even breathing took effort. Blurry at first, but sharper the longer her eyes were open, she came to recognize first her darkened bedroom, dimly lit by the hall light peeking in through the slit of the door, and then the man standing at the foot of her bed and the other sitting on the mattress at her hip. The platinum-blond head of Healer Draco Malfoy was unmistakable even in the darkness, but the shaggy-haired, newly-reinstated Lord Sirius Black was practically a shadow at her side. Until he leaned forward, grinned, and—

"Morning, sunshine!" barked Sirius, proving he'd been the one to demand she wake the fuck up.

Pleasant.

As her eyes continued to adjust, she noticed that Draco looked a bit less put-together. His outer robes were shed in favor of a buttoned shirt rolled up to his elbows, exposing the faded and blurry form of the Dark Mark, and his normally slicked-back hair was mussed. She'd seen him look this bedraggled maybe once, but the barely-bottled anger in his eyes was new. It wasn't tinged with petulance or soured by a sneer, and if she wasn't so sore, she would've been more worried.

Groaning, she tried to sit up, but her arms would've been better off made from liquefied lead for all the good it did her. Thankfully, Sirius came to her aid, pulling her up so he could adjust her pillows and help her lean against the headboard. He handed her a glass of water and made sure her grip was secure enough to hold onto it. The humor on his lips and the stern rise of his left eyebrow didn't give away a thing.

"May I?" growled Draco impatiently, his stance misleadingly casual as he stood with his hands in his well-tailored trouser pockets.

"Proceed," answered Sirius.

"Granger, when I told you to avoid death before you could discover how to reverse it, that wasn't a by-your-leave to die as you made your bloody discovery!"

"Draco, I—"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot you're woefully unaware that you were clawing on death's door!"

"To be honest, you were just sort of leaning against it," amended Sirius snidely, "with a toothbrush and some toothpaste in your gob."

"You were passed out on your bathroom floor because you exhausted your entire system, stressed your magical core beyond belief by yanking his arse out of limbo, and you went and made it worse by traipsing up and down England!"

"Oh, Merlin," she muttered, lowering her trembling hands so her water glass could rest on her lap before it spilled.

"Are you going to blame your stupidity on him?! Is Merlin why didn't you get yourself checked out while Black was being tested too? Your body couldn't recover by itself anymore! By the time Black practically hauled me through the Floo, you were a hairsbreadth from dying. Woman, if you weren't so set on committing suicide, I'd kill you myself!"

Hermione grimaced and swallowed. "Draco—"

"Don't you 'Draco' me! Do you have any idea what would happen if you died under my watch?! The entire world would disintegrate, and I'd be lambasted and labeled the harbinger of the Apocalypse!"

"All right! That's enough of that," said Sirius, standing up. "Neither of you have eaten—one because of unconsciousness and the other because of a dying patient to be discreetly healed. I'm getting food."

He flicked on the lights as he headed through the door, making Hermione jump and pour her water over herself in her attempt to shield her aching eyes. As she fumbled with her glass, her pillows, her wet sheets, and her limbs, Draco suddenly wrenched the damp duvet off her and pressed his hand to her shoulder, holding her still.

"Listen intently, Granger, because if you think for a second that you can wrench another person out of the Veil and survive it, I'm going to have your Unspeakable status revoked and have you thrown into the Janus Thickey ward. Do you understand me?" he growled, quicksilver eyes flashing.

Now that he was close and the room was lit, she could see the bags under his eyes and the extra paleness of his skin. There was something new, palpable in his demeanor, and it kept Hermione silent.

"The Veil is much like the legendary Mirror of Erised. You know what that is, don't you? It shows the heart's true desire. But the Veil summons that for which your heart yearns," he gritted out, jaw tight. "Something that can commune with your own bloody soul that doesn't have a soul of its own, Granger? Isn't that something you learned about early in Unspeakable training?"

Hermione blanched—forgetting the cold wet clothes and sheets, forgetting the bone-deep ache of being drained. "It's stealing from my soul."

"And how many times have you tried that ritual before actually being successful?" growled Draco. "How many times has it used your damned soul to fuel your little experiments? And what about now? Is it using your soul to keep Black alive? Are you his tether to this world?"

"All right, sugarplums, you've got three options!" barked Sirius, kicking open Hermione's door again with a tray in his hands and two more following close behind his shoulders. "Scrambled, sunny-side-up, or soft-boiled eggs. Hermione, do you have anything else but eggs in your icebox-thing?"

Draco had leapt back from the bed and waved his wand, drying everything with a subtle wave of his wand. "I'm going home."

"Take the soft-boiled eggs then. You haven't eaten, and they seem more like your type," said Sirius, levitating the left tray to the younger man's chin. "You know? Hard shell outside, big softy on the inside."

Draco scowled and grabbed the tray before it could keep bumping his face. "And, what? You're the sunny-side-up, you obnoxious bastard?"

"No, fool, I was in Azkaban and limbo," answered Sirius, pushing past him to plop next to Hermione again. "I'm scrambled."

The blond rolled his eyes and walked out of the room, hesitating just long enough to say, "Happy Christmas, you idiots."

Hermione's eyes widened, mentally calculating how long she'd been out. She'd pulled Sirius from the Veil on the Winter Solstice, and if it was Christmas already, that meant—

"I've been asleep for three days?!"

"Don't act so surprised," called Draco, probably from her living room. "That's how long you were out last time too."

"Right, so eat up, woman," said Sirius, nudging the plate of eggs in front of her. "This is just so you have enough energy to get your arse dressed and through the Floo so we can make it to the Weasley's in time for Christmas Eve dinner before they get suspicious and have you thrashed for being so damn reckless with your health."

Hermione winced. "Thank goodness I bought everything, but I didn't even wrap—"

"You have magic—"

"Merlin's sake, Black! Did you understand a word I said?!" screeched Draco.

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Fine, I will wrap your bloody presents. They're in those paper bags by your tree, right? Thank Merlin you're so bloody organized. Eat your damned food. You need to show up to this thing. I could only make excuses for your condition for so long before the entire clan—and by that, I mean Ginny—picks up on something and shows up."

Needless to say, Hermione managed to get through Sirius's eggs and a dose of Pepper-Up to dress decently enough not to rouse suspicion at the Burrow. After checking over Sirius's decent job of magically wrapping her presents, they made their way through the fireplace and landed in the cheerfully-decorated sitting room of the Burrow. The Weasleys had gone all-out with their decorations, likely in celebration of Sirius's return. The tree, laden with ornaments, tinsel, and ribbons, seemed to be floating over a massive pile of gifts where Sirius promptly added Hermione's pile.

She barely had time to take it all in before she was swarmed by her adoptive family. After Molly and Arthur's hugs, she was passed around family members who rejoiced her quick recovery in time to join the party. George asked if she needed any chocolate, and Ginny just shoved a box of it into her hands along with a bottle of her favorite red wine. Clearly Sirius fell back on his tried-and-true excuse for absent women, and Hermione smacked the back of his head hard enough for it to actually hurt.

A part of her liked him better moody and taciturn, but that was only a fraction of a miniscule part of her. The rest of her quite enjoyed his newfound cheer and good humor. He was much more like the Sirius Remus had once told them about—mischievous, boisterous, and more than a little bit annoying. She didn't even cry out in indignation when he tried to dance with her. As Snuffles. With no music. And his dog breath in her face. It was only to turn little Jamie's tears to giggles. Hermione just laughed and played along, leading the big dog around the open yard of the Burrow.

When they finally ended the dance with a flourish and a strange canine bow, Ginny latched onto Hermione's side as Harry set a squealing Jamie on the big dog's back. Snuffles let out a wide-eyed whine, but gamely began to prance. Jamie screeched at an even higher pitch, his little hands tightening around fistfuls of black fur.

"Grimmauld Place is practically a nightmare, by the way," said Ginny yawned dramatically, poking Hermione's side and making her jerk. "Ron, George, Charlie, and even Dad show up and don't leave."

"Sirius's doing?"

"Unintentional it may be, it's still his fault. I think his good mood is infectious for them, and he's not one to pass up company anymore," said Ginny as Sirius suddenly barked right in a sleepy Ron's ear, making Jamie laugh and Ron yelp and fall off his seat.

Hermione chuckled. "Consider it practice for your second little munchkin."

"More like practice for the second, third, fourth, fifth, six, and seventh munchkins too, Merlin," grumbled Ginny, rubbing her swollen belly. She sighed. "But Harry is…" The warmth in her brown eyes spread to the rest of her face as she leaned her head against Hermione's shoulder. "He's so happy, Hermione. Thank you."

"It was my pleasure," said Hermione, smiling and kissing Ginny's temple. "Even it may turn out be a bit to our detriment."

Ginny laughed. "So what's next on your list of projects? You brought a man back from the dead. Are you going figure out how to brew the Elixir of Life without the Sorcerer's Stone? Will you go on a quest to find Shangri-La? Or—be still my heart—perhaps find a way for Muggles and magical folk to live together in peace and harmony?"

"None of that, thank you," said Hermione, grimacing. "I'm just going to do a bit of follow-up research, record what I've done in a book perhaps. More bookish things, Gin, honestly. Don't worry."

"That mean you're not going to be as reclusive?" asked Ginny pointedly. "From the way Sirius was boasting about annoying the hell out of you, it seems like you've already…bonded a little."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at the redhead's all-too-knowing look and wondered, not for the first time, how much of her life Ginny was aware of. But she chose not to dwell on it, if only for the fact that she had enough to worry about.

After a spirited Christmas dinner packed with hysterical anecdotes, minor food throwing, and an appropriate amount of scolding, Hermione found herself taking a stroll around the back of the Burrow with a blanketed Jamie taking a nap on her shoulder as the two-year-old was still loathe to release her curls. It was cold, snowy December, but she kept a warming charm up around them so they could enjoy the cool, white evening. The good meal, the good friends, and the beautiful weather had done wonders for the deep ache in her body, but the circumstances of her morning still weighed heavily.

Light footsteps thrummed across the snow until they slowed and grew louder, and a newly-shifted Sirius came up beside her with a crooked grin and a stack of chocolate-covered biscuits on a napkin in his hand.

"I come bearing chocolate," he said wryly. "How's the munchkin?"

"Out like a light. He'll sleep through a hurricane and an earthquake now," answered Hermione, taking a biscuit and eating almost half in one bite. "You wore him right out."

Sirius snorted and rubbed the little boy's back. "Wonders what a wiped record and a life outside a house of horrors can do, eh?"

"I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop," said Hermione, rubbing her cheek against Jamie's soft, dark hair and shooting a pointed glance at Sirius, "and for all the spices in my cabinet to be switched out with each other."

"For the record, James and I tried that, to our own detriment. Flour doesn't sweeten tea as well as sugar."

"The consistency of sugar and flour is vastly different—how could you two have mistaken—"

He ignored her and shoved a biscuit in his mouth. "As for the other shoe, that was a reason why I was in your flat."

"A reason?" she echoed. "There's more than one?"

"Yeah, you bloody ditched me that night, so I was going to drag you out to breakfast to make reparations. But then you ditched me again by being unconscious."

"So sorry my affliction was such a burden to you," scoffed Hermione, finishing her biscuit.

"Forgiven," he quipped, winking and handing over another biscuit and toasting it with his own.

"Is that the other shoe then?" laughed Hermione. "Will your general presence beleaguer me?"

Sirius cleared his throat. "Well, more like a lack thereof."

Thankfully, she hadn't taken a bite of the biscuit. She might've choked on it. "Pardon?!"

When Sirius didn't smirk or wink, the padding that his cheerful mood had on her day began to deteriorate. "You know," he began softly, his breath coming out in clouds as he looked out toward the snow-covered, moonlit meadow, "I broke from the pureblood system because I realized everyone embedded in it were two steps from taking a flying leap into Azkaban. And then look at me—the only one in my immediate family to land myself in that hellhole, and I was stuck there for twelve years, paying for a crime I wish I'd been more involved in, if only so I could've had a better chance of stopping it."

"Sirius—"

His grey eyes snapped back to her, bright and hard, but it softened after a heartbeat, and he waved off her concern. "I talked to Ginny—" He paused, flinching. "Rather, Ginny gave me the talking-to of my life, bloody hell."

Hermione shoved the whole biscuit into her mouth so she could free her hand and shift Jamie on her shoulder. "What'd you do?" she asked.

"Nothing!" cried Sirius, his voice rising a few octaves. "Thanks so much for the vote of confidence. It was Ron and George who were a bit too spirited and planned out a weeklong bender in celebration of my return."

Hermione rolled her eyes and bounced Jamie before setting off again, Sirius matching her steps.

"I didn't even commit before Ginny was yanking me by the ear. To her credit, it was less of a scolding and more of an imparting of genuinely good advice," he continued. "She reaffirmed what I'd been thinking about long before falling in and out of the Veil. You want this last one?"

She nodded, and he held out the biscuit for her to bite.

"Reminds me of Lily, that one," he said, smiling faintly. "But bolder. Lily only alluded to my stunted maturity, but that Ginevra Molly—she went and bloody called me out on it at surprisingly dangerous decibels."

"She yelled at you?" asked Hermione, swallowing her bite and finishing off the rest of the biscuit that he held up.

"No—it's dangerous because she's not yelling. Much, much scarier. Not even twelve hours out of bloody limbo, and she already goes and tells me to figure my life out," he chuckled, brushing off crumbs off his hands.

"I told you that for years," grumbled Hermione around the biscuit.

"But you were sixteen, and I still had one foot firmly planted in hell," he said. "This is the first time in twenty-four years that I'm free. And even more so than before since I don't have my family's reputation looming over me or a threat to the world breathing down my neck."

"So what now?" she asked.

He sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I've got to reconcile the kid fresh out of his teen years who suddenly lost everything meaningful in his life with the angry, bitter old cretin I tend to feel. I've got to at least try to be a decent, honorable person that would make people proud, that would make me feel like I've finally become the man I thought I'd be, once upon a time."

Hermione frowned. "And leaving just when you've returned is your solution?"

"I'm not leaving tomorrow, and I won't be gone long," he said. "I'll leave in a couple days, I'll be back in a month or so—in time for Sirius James's birth."

Hermione nearly burst out laughing. "They're naming their second baby Sirius James?"

Sirius snorted and shook his head. "Sirius James, James Sirius II, or even Robert Bob, for all I care—anything's better than what they were thinking about. That boy had better come up with something else or I'll host a bloody séance so his mother can chew him out herself. Bloody Alb—oh, Merlin save us all."

She chuckled and shook her head along with him. "So, where will you go?"

"We had plans to travel the world," replied Sirius with a wink. "For how could Messrs. Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs rule the globe if they hadn't seen it all?"

She was surprised to see no hint of malice when he uttered the name of their traitorous best friend, but she supposed that was part of the maturing process he was hoping to have. "So standard places? Rome, Paris, Athens?"

"No, nothing so typical," he answered. "We wanted to be exposed to all the different hues of magic—even if Prongs and I were fixated on the mischievous benefits while Mooney was practically creaming his pants just thinking about the overall acquisition of knowledge. Wormtail wanted to explore the mythology of each individual culture as he was always quite interested in stories. We all understood that the best examples of magic weren't always in the most popular places."

She watched his eyes glaze over again in memory and smiled. She'd been worried they'd fall into their old formula of bickering or simply descending into an awkward silence due to lack of common interests, but it was always said that Sirius was a charmer. She should've expected that they'd get along if only by his sheer tenacity to get along with her.

"I'm not going on a full world tour," he said. "Just specific places we each wanted to experience. Starting with Tasmania."

Hermione chuckled. "Beginning the trip at the edge of the world? I should've expected that kind of dramatics from you."

"In my defense, it was Prongs's idea, thanks. But Mooney always did use to say I needed a curtain and a stage to house my drama," he said, grinning. And she was disappointed to see it fade just as quickly as it appeared. "Despite my friends' belief that I love an audience, I've got to be by myself for a while. Need to properly say goodbye instead of brood about the fact that they're gone." He looked down at his boots and kicked a chunk of snow. "Reckoned you'd understand why I'm doing this best of all."

Hermione paused and turned to look at him. "Me? Why?"

Sirius met her gaze quietly, and once again, she wasn't sure what he was trying to convey with his expression. Instead, he shrugged and reached out to rub Jamie's back and cradle the little boy's head as he leaned in and kissed a plump little cheek, his hair brushing Hermione's chin and giving her a strong whiff of leather, mint, and…

"He gets to be more and more like me every day I see him," he muttered proudly.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Wishful thinking."

"You deny it to shield your constitution, but the truth stands. He's well on his way to being the youngest Marauder."

She ignored his delusions. Their previous conversation was not over. "You'll come back, won't you?"

He looked up, his face as serious as his name—which meant it wasn't all that serious. His easygoing smile soothed some of her worries, though it didn't do much for her temper. "Of course I'll be ba—"

"And you won't take any stupid risks? Because if you jeopardize your life in any way, Sirius Black, I will—"

Sirius laughed and tugged on a stray curl that'd fallen out of her bun. "Love, what will you do? You went through the trouble of yanking me out, I hardly think you'll personally damage the goods."

She blamed her next action on the shot of firewhiskey George had made her take and the wine the women had shared. "Well, from what I've heard of your old reputation, those are _used_ goods."

It seemed to take him several seconds to fully register the words, but when he did—"Who are you?!" he cried incredulously, throwing his head back and laughing.

Her entire face burning, Hermione instinctively covered Jamie's ears, but the toddler didn't even stir. So she rolled her eyes and kept walking, Sirius trailing after her as he laughed. She tried to laugh with him, but she was a bit busy frowning at herself because he was right to ask such a thing. If he'd said the same thing several years before, she would've thought it, sure, but something else would've come out her mouth.

She wasn't the same Hermione Granger that hopped onto a scarlet train that took her to a magical school, but neither was she the Hermione Granger that crawled out of the rubble of the Battle of Hogwarts. Who she was now, well…

Frankly, she wasn't sure either.


	5. Falling

**5.  
Falling**

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"How did you describe it again?" asked Hermione, her quill sashaying across the parchment as she crossed out several lines of writing.

Cedric grimaced as he tried to pull together a reasonable explanation, but he was never the best with that kind of thing. "I suppose it's like being on drugs," he answered, though his voice rose on the tail end of his statement as if he was asking a question. "Not that I've got much experience on that front, but I mean that it's all a bit hazy and you're not fully in control, but you're aware of certain things."

Hermione opened her mouth but then closed it again. Her honey-brown eyes slid around the room as she seemingly tried to digest his explanation. She winced as she turned back to the stack of parchment on her lap and noted her findings. Cedric was fairly sure she was adding another "To Be Revised" notation in the margins; he'd seen those quite frequently when she'd passed by close enough for him to read over her shoulder.

He cleared his throat. "So back to the topic—"

"We can change that too," she chirped. "That'd be perfect."

"Nope," he said, leaning back on one elbow and crossing his ankle over the other as he lounged as best as he could on the nebulous "floor" on his side of the Veil. "I'm not letting this go until you simply accept it. I would have asked you to the ball had we spent any amount of time together beforehand."

She rolled her eyes again and pushed herself up from where she'd been sitting on the stone floor of the dais for the last several minutes as she'd interrogated him about the atmosphere of what lay beyond the Veil. She'd moved most of her work into the Death Chamber to better pick apart his spectral brain about all he knew of death and the Veil.

It was amusing and a bit jarring for him to see such a professionally put-together woman in her stylish high heels, perfectly-pressed pinstripe trousers, and pretty blouse shuck her Unspeakable robes, mussing her curly hair in the process, toss it aside, and sit down upon the floor, Indian-style. It reminded him of the several times he'd seen her studying out by the lake, surrounded by sunshine and a veritable storm of assignments and personal research projects.

"Did you forget that we traveled to the World Cup on the same portkey?" she asked, reaching down to flip open a giant, violet book that looked on the verge of disintegration. Cedric immediately veered his gaze to another stack of books to keep from ogling Hermione's figure. "You dropped from a tree."

He did remember, as a matter of fact. He remembered being quite shy and intimidated by the small battalion of popular Gryffindors, not to mention the fact that that three of them had already built a notorious reputation of being caught up in rumored adventures every single year. He also remembered thinking that the young witch whose Muggle clothes actually looked well-coordinated had pretty caramel and chocolate curls that threatened to spill from the ponytail at the base of her neck.

"We didn't spend time together though," he said instead. "It was to the same capacity as living in the same castle for four years without interacting. I mean that if we'd had our conversation in library earlier in the year, I would've felt compelled to ask you."

Hermione scoffed and flipped through another book, another lock of her hair falling out of its bun. "Because you absolutely would've wanted to spend the entirety of the Yule Ball talking."

"That's always preferable to being paraded around for being chosen to risk your life for spectacle. I had to fight a bloody dragon, and then they make me _dance_. In front of my peers."

She threw a pointed glance at him over her shoulder. "You literally signed up for it."

He rolled his eyes and sighed in concession of the fact. "Well, yes, but no one said anything about dancing before the bloody Goblet was put out."

"No one said a damn thing about dragons either!" Hermione laughed, and he grinned at the sound. "Now what did you say you feel when you surface in the Veil?" she asked.

He bit his lip, grimacing once again. "Like waking up being poisoned so that everything looks like it trembles a bit and is hidden behind a very thin, gauze-like material—"

"Like a Veil?"

"D'you want my help or not?!"

Hermione burst out laughing again and turned back to the book in her hand before crouching down to use her thigh as a flat surface to jot down more notes. "You know, at first, I thought you were complimenting me, but you've taken this conversation so far that I'm not sure if you're following it just because you're bored or—"

"Or if I genuinely believe that I would've preferred your company over Cho's and must defend it against the incessant perpetuation of your ideas of adolescent status quo and the social pressures of being an ideal heartthrob and Triwizard Champion?"

Hermione met Cedric's smug smirk with a scrunched up expression of suppressed laughter that she obviously decided not to let loose. "Well, if you keep insisting on this, then I'll have to throw another wrench into your hypothetical plans. Even if you had asked me, I wouldn't have agreed to with you."

He twitched, jerking out of his lazy position and feeling torn between mild offense and embarrassment at his own assumptions. Hermione hummed cheerfully as she smiled at him and finished off her writing with a flourish before rolling up her parchment.

* * *

"Even if it is only through letters, it's nice to see him…settling into himself, if you know what I mean," said Ginny, stirring the pot of sauce and lifting the wooden spoon to have a taste. She hummed in approval and spooned out another bit to offer to her companion. "He seems more at peace than he ever was. Maybe even before the first war boiled over."

Fleur tasted the sauce and licked her lips, nodding. "Not zat we 'ave much reference of what 'e— _he_ —was like in 'is— _his_ —younger days." She reached over and poured the chopped herbs into the pot.

"No, but we've heard enough stories. He was a temperamental heartbreaker with a dark streak," said Ginny, lowering the heat to let the sauce simmer. "I've no doubt he's still got those tendencies since they're likely ingrained in his soul."

Ginny used the lull in cooking to wipe down the counter with a spare rag, and Fleur went back to her work on the salad.

"But from the way he reminisces about the other Marauders in his letters," continued Ginny, shaking her head. "I don't know. He seems to be giving up a lot of the negativity that weighed down on him. You can tell especially when he mentions Peter Pettigrew."

"Oh, yes. 'E— _he_ —calls him 'Wormtail' exclusively now," said Fleur, scowling a bit. She levitated the colander of spaghetti noodles from the sink and sent it tipping into the pot. "It's as if he has separated ze friend he once knew and ze man who—well, who fucked it all," she added, lowering her voice so her daughter wouldn't overhear from where she was playing in the wide playpen with Jamie.

Ginny snorted. "You don't have to keep correcting your accent, you know."

"That's the mindset I had after learning English, but now zat Victoire is struggling between two tongues, I have to be mindful of my pronunciation of consonants."

"But she sounds so cute when she misses her 'h' sounds."

Fleur's scowl darkened. "She is being teased by her classmates, and Bill won't let me teach her how to fight zem."

"Since when has Bill ever stopped you from doing anything?" asked Ginny, rolling her eyes.

"Since it meant I could have my daughter put in a juvenile detention facility."

Ginny winced and nodded . "Victoire is quite vicious."

Fleur rolled her eyes. "Part Veela."

"You must be so proud," chuckled Ginny.

 _"Bien sûr,"_ Fleur scoffed. She glanced up at the clock over the stove of Grimmauld Place and sighed. "Now, Hermione, I'm not quite so proud of right now. She was supposed to be here ten minutes ago."

"She's coming from work. Of course she'd be late," said Ginny, turning off the heat and waving her wand to pour the contents of the pot into the pale blue serving dish nearby. "She's even harder to get ahold of now that Sirius is back. I think he would've been the only one who could drag her from her work, and he's abroad."

"I was afraid of zis," said Fleur, shaking her head and pushing her long, golden blonde hair back over her shoulder. "I knew zat as soon as she managed to bring back one person, she'd know it could be done and would try to bring back more."

"I can't fault her for feeling that way, as much as I want to," said Ginny, rubbing her stomach and feeling the baby stir. "Sirius went off to say goodbye to his friends and found himself on the way, but Hermione—she's probably one of the last people who should be studying death."

Fleur turned to the table and gave the salad a half-hearted toss as Ginny sat down at the table, the dish of spaghetti floating after her and settling itself on the middle of the table. The two women half-heartedly prepared the rest of the dinner, still waiting for Hermione to arrive.

"I suppose I should be glad she's not in the Time Room," muttered Ginny. "She might've actually gone back thirty or forty years to try preventing everything bad from happening."

"I might prefer zat over having her work in ze Death Chamber," said Fleur softly. "If she'd gone back in time, at least she'd be with people who are alive and actually have some hope of surviving. Not passing days with ghosts lingering perhaps only in her mind."

They lapsed into a sad but companionable silence again, listening to Victoire telling Jamie a convoluted fairy tale of a pot falling in love with a pan and living happily ever after in a cupboard.

* * *

"Can I ask why you wouldn't have gone to the ball with me?"

Hermione straightened up from her writing to balk at Cedric, her hair neatly pulled back into a plait that time. "Is it your goal to revisit this conversation when there's a lull?"

"I'm dead." He shrugged. "It's not like I've got anything else to do. Would you prefer to argue over House Elf culture or the surprising foundation of pureblood supremacy instead?"

Hermione rolled her eyes, but to Cedric's amusement, she indulged the dead boy and paused her interrogation about the changing atmosphere of the chamber when he wasn't there, when he arrived, when he remained, and when he left. "I wouldn't have gone with you," she stated, "because Viktor asked me less than three days after it was announced. You wouldn't have had the opportunity."

"The opportunity to talk to you and make the decision that you'd be a fun date?" he clarified skeptically. "I hardly think that would take me three days, Granger."

"No, you would've taken—at the very least—a week."

"To screw up the courage to talk to you?"

"No, you're too nice to have to deliberate over something as simple as that. We would've talked, but then you would've heard the rumors that would've flown around the school of someone like you associating with someone like me."

"I don't even think you're defending the sociology of teenagers anymore, Hermione. You're being adamantly self-deprecating," he said, shaking his head. "What do you mean 'someone like you' and 'someone like me?' We don't operate in different leagues, for Merlin's sake."

Hermione scowled and rolled her eyes, trying to shift on the multi-colored polka dot cushion she'd restored to its normal size after pulling it from her pocket. She called it a "bean bag chair." It didn't sound right. "You were a Hufflepuff," she said, "and I was a Gryffindor—"

Cedric laughed, leaning back against the archway and watching Hermione struggle to push herself out of her seat. He'd maneuvered himself around so much that he'd realized that his physical parameters were restricted to what Hermione could see of his side. So while he looked down and saw no real floor, he could certainly feel it. "So you're being a classist—or house-ist?!"

"—you were a popular Quidditch player," she gritted out, finally rolling off the side to land in a crouch, " and my relationship with the sport is notoriously bad—"

"Your bloody best friend was the youngest Seeker Hogwarts had seen in centuries, and you went out with the best bloody Seeker in the professional league!"

"—you were so popular with the girls," she continued, unfazed as she readjusted her grey skirt and padded, barefoot, to a nearby stack of books that came to her hip-level, "and I was practically a pariah—"

"If we're getting onto the topic of pariahs, your friend Ron should be brought into the discussion. Did you see that bloke's interaction with Fleur Delacour?!"

"—and you were two years ahead!" finished Hermione, whacking her book with a scroll for emphasis. "We may have lived under the same roof for years, but we operated in vastly different circles, Cedric, enough to have warranted a lot of whispers if we were seen interacting."

"So what?! People frowned down on me for befriending Potter when he was still _persona non grata_ all over the school, but see how that didn't stop me?"

"You make it sound like you hauled him into your circle of friends when the extent of your 'befriending' was a passing nod and smile in the hallways."

"And that was still more than any other Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and fellow Gryffindor was willing to give him during that time—and stop arguing with me about my friendship with Harry when it's our hypothetical relationship that's the issue."

"We wouldn't have one in the first place because it would never have graduated into anything beyond a casual friendship, so you would never have even contemplated asking me to the ball!"

Cedric cocked an eyebrow. Catching on to the fact that their volume had significantly increased, and that her voice was ricocheting all over the room, Hermione took a deep breath and brought her voice down to a more reasonable decibel.

"The connotations of having a date meant you were romantically interested in the person, and though that might not have stood for people who waited until the last minute and asked out the random girl as a last-ditch effort to avoid looking like what they would would be a pathetic idiot—"

"Like Ron and Harry, you mean."

"—you asking someone like me at any point before the two days prior to the ball implied some sort of romantic interest, which you did not have," gritted out Hermione through her teeth. "That is why you asked Cho."

Cedric threw up his hands in frustration. "Because I hadn't talked to you yet!"

Hermione sighed and covered her face with her hands. "I've completely lost track of this conversation."

And because he was dead and literally had nothing to lose anymore, he threw all caution to the wind.

"Oi, Granger," he laughed. "Granger, look at me."

She exhaled loudly—more of a growl than anything else, really—and lowered her hands, shooting him a longsuffering look for good measure. He grinned, his elbows propped up on his knees as he carded his fingers together.

"If I had talked to you, I would have asked you to the ball," he said slowly, enunciating each syllable properly so she couldn't refute, "and all its connotations."

He watched her open, close, open, and close her mouth. She stood there, the shades of beautiful and unattainable a bit different, but still as vivid as before.

And then she turned back to her parchment. "So do you think the voices' reactions when you disappear and reappear are opposing your presence or working to summon you back?"

Cedric rubbed his forehead. "I have no idea."

He watched her scribble out a few lines and grip her quill so hard that he'd give her three seconds before she poked a hole through the parchment or snapped her quill. After several minutes' silence, she cleared her throat.

"For the record, if you'd asked me, I would've said no because I wasn't in the the mood nor mindset to handle the aftermath of that kind of decision."

"You accepted Krum's invitation, and he was an actual celebrity," he pointed out.

"Yes, but people quickly realized he wasn't particularly social or charming, and so they were less inclined to put him on that kind of pedestal," said Hermione. "He wasn't…like you."

Cedric watched her, standing there in her lavender button-up shirt and gray skirt, her hair occasionally sparking with magic as she practically lectured him—and his lips curled up into a smirk before blooming into another grin.

"So what're your next questions, Granger?" he asked, giving her an out to the conversation that they could quickly spiral out of control.

Hermione seized his opportunity and moved the topic far, far away.

* * *

"We should tell him."

"No."

"Why the hell not? It'll be something he'll get pissed at us about because we _didn't_ tell him."

"We're not telling him."

"He's gonna prank the living shit out of us, mate. I may deal with Dark wizards on a daily basis, but I don't think I've got the nerve to deal with a full Marauder prank. I could barely stomach Fred and George."

"We're not telling Sirius," said Harry decisively. Even the fire paused its crackling as if in deference to Harry's insistence. The Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts set down his tumbler of Firewhiskey and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "He'll only cut his trip short, come home, and raise hell, and do you know what'll happen when he raises hell?"

"Hermione will raise the other half of it," recited Ron blandly, leaning back in his armchair as he tugged on the fastenings of his Auror robes frustratedly, "and we're going to have to try and talk them down from sparking the Apocalypse."

"Precisely. We're not telling Sirius."

Ron shook his head and looked around the dim office, as if seeking answers from the books and objects around the room. "We haven't seen her in a week and half. Fleur and Ginny barely got her to dinner that one time because they hauled Jamie into the fire to cry in front of Hermione that he missed her and her hair."

"I know, but—"

"But what, Harry? Hermione's holed herself down there in the Department of Mysteries, doing Merlin-knows-what else to the laws of life and death, and we're just supposed to sit back and wait for her to literally raise hell?" demanded Ron, throwing up his hands. "Short of organizing a full-scale intervention, we've tried nearly everything to get her out of there. Ginny told you what she looked like, right? She was pale and lethargic. Barely ate a forkful of the Bolognese and only half her titty-miss-you."

Harry snorted into his glass and coughed. "It's tiramisu, Ron."

"Whatever the fuck it is, mate, I don't like this!" cried Ron.

"But did Ginny tell you what she was like?" asked Harry quietly, wrapping his hands around his glass and bowing his head over it. "She was happy."

Ron sighed, rubbed his temples, and muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like, _Fuck me._

"She was actually more engaged in the conversations," continued Harry, shaking his head. "She was the bloody chatterbox this time around, reminiscing about moments where we were stupid and hilarious. She was the one circumventing her Oath of Silence, offering up snippets of her research because she was so excited about the new things she'd discovered and couldn't keep to herself."

Ron groaned and leaned forward, dropping his head onto the edge of Harry's desk and rubbing the back of his neck.

Harry downed the rest of his drink and winced. "Ginny said this was the most alive she'd seen Hermione in years."

"Then why the bloody hell does it feel like we're about to lose her?"

* * *

"I think that if you and I had dated, you would've been the one to dump me."

Cedric kept from chortling out loud as he watched Hermione look up from her work, skipping straight over him, and straight to the ceiling of the chamber. She sighed.

"So assuming I'd go to the ball with you wasn't enough that now you have to assume that not only would I have even engaged in a relationship with you," stated Hermione, shifting her position on the bean bag again and toeing off her heels, the hems of her dark grey trousers brushing the floor, "but that the demise of our hypothetical relationship is on me?!"

Cedric laughed, tipping to the side in his mirth and nearly banging his head on the floor. Hermione rolled her eyes and continued annotating the book in her lap.

"Well, you're the one who's so damn fixated on social pressures and obligations that I think you'd be the one to succumb to them if we had dated," he said, propping himself up onto his side with his elbow.

Hermione growled in exasperation. "Are you saying that I would've caved under social pressures? I managed to take down Rita Skeeter. I blackmailed that abhorrent woman when I was only fifteen years old."

"Yes, but those were major slights against your person, Granger," he countered shrewdly, drumming a beat on his thigh. "The social pressures I'm talking about are subtle ones that chip at your armor in all the right places. You can make your house unplottable and shield it with as many charms as you can, but it's all for nothing under the influence of termites."

"Honestly, Cedric—"

He held up a hand to stop her. "You would've heard whispers about how we weren't good enough for each other, how you were too brainy and I was too popular or some such nonsense. You would've begun to question my loyalty, thinking I had some girl on the side."

"Have you so little faith in me?!" spluttered Hermione, her quill bending precariously in her hand. "You think a few whispers would do us in?"

"Whispers, rumors, well-placed comments that would have you questioning both your emotions and mine…" He trailed off, eyeing her knowingly.

"I highly doubt I would ever engage in any sort of relationship whose foundations are so weak as to crumble under the weight of whispers," she said, snorting as she pulled out her wand and reinforced her weakened quill.

Cedric smiled and brushed off imaginary lint from his shoulder. "So you would have agreed to go to the ball with me, had I asked."

Hermione's mouth fell open, and her newly-reinforced eagle-feather quill snapped between her fingers. Ink spattered her hand and periwinkle blue blouse.

"The only reason you would've turned me down is because of what you thought were social obligations, but you essentially just damned to hell social obligations and society's ideas of what people should do," he said, picking at his nails. "You would've deliberated for a few hours, weighed the pros and cons, and argued yourself in circles. In the end, you would've stormed up to me and angrily accepted my invitation in the middle of a crowded hallway just to prove your point."

He watched her expressive, multi-hued eyes with boundless amusement that he only just managed to stifle.

"You think you're so clever, don't you?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

"I've got to be, if I want to keep up with the Brightest Witch of Her Age."

He'd lost count of how many times she'd rolled her eyes with a smile playing on her lips, but he still didn't lose a modicum of appreciation for the sight. She repaired her quill and continued to write. He watched her and waited for the inevitable—

"And what made you think that my acceptance would lead to us dating?!" she cried, her frustration seeming to fuel the growing volume of her loose curls.

Cedric shrugged. "We would've had a good time, I'm sure of it. I would've danced with you all evening unless you shoved me aside. I would've cut in if someone made you uncomfortable during a dance. I would've talked your ear off and let you talk off mine so we were even, and the only silence that would've fallen over us would be comfortable and not the least bit awkward. I would've had you tired from dancing and from laughing as I kept you literally and figuratively on your toes all night. Tell me, Hermione Granger, about how you and I wouldn't have dated after I accompanied you to the Yule Ball."

His explanation had gotten quite heated toward the end—in direct correlation to the knowing smile that bloomed on Hermione's face.

"You and I wouldn't have dated purely because I was at the age where I simply had too much to deal with even without something as frivolous as boyfriends," she said.

"Spoken like someone with perfect hind-vision," he said, looking all-too-pleased with her answer. "Are you absolutely positive that you would've been so objective back then?"

"And are you so absolutely sure in your ability to charm a girl in one night?"

Cedric shook his head, chuckling softly. "I didn't say it was going to happen over one night. You would've turned me down the first time I asked you out on a proper date, but I would've obviously known to implement siege tactics."

"Siege tactics?!"

"Yeah, all's fair in love and war, right?"

"You are remarkably well-versed in Muggle sayings, Cedric."

"I read, Hermione. Muggle comic books, science fiction, Grimm Brothers' fairytales, Sherlock Holmes."

Hermione nodded, smiling a little. "Yes, yes, I remember. You'd said your parents occasionally let you go into Muggle London just for a little cultural exploration. You heard of a strange, talking mouse and a man named Walt Disney."

He nodded proudly. "Walking into that Muggle cinema was one of the best ideas of my life—The Lion King was the greatest thing I'd ever watched."

Hermione laughed and nodded. "It was my favorite too."

"See?" asked Cedric, throwing his hands out. "We would've had a great time at the ball."

Hermione shook her head and chuckled alongside his triumphant laughter.

* * *

Passerby might have mistaken the camaraderie between Padma Patil and Draco Malfoy to be friendship, but anyone who was acquainted with them would've known otherwise. What seemed like friendship was nothing more than a partnership three steps lower than amicable. The fact that they weren't glowering at each other, yelling, or throwing food was due to several months' experience that finally led them to an agreement that animosities should be suspended for the sake of mutual projects.

It also explained the hazy appearance of the pair's corner of the pub, which meant Ginny spotted them quickly. Without a moment's hesitation, she stomped over to them, subtly waving her wand and breaking down the discretionary spellwork necessary for a discussion of classified projects in a public setting. As soon as she broke through the first latticework layer, Draco sighed and looked up, already resigned to the presence of the belligerent Lady Potter. He brought down his magical barriers before she could tear through the rest. Pregnancy did scary wonders for witches' magic. Padma sat back in her chair and grinned amusedly.

"So," said Ginny, dropping heavily on the chair next to Padma and taking the woman's untouched bread roll. "Who's going to explain what's happening to Hermione?"

Draco sighed. Padma winced.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Of course. Your Oaths of Silence."

Padma shrugged apologetically.

"That's fine," said Ginny, rolling her neck until it cracked. "I'm going to get it out of you two even if you've got to imply it all."

"Bloody Gryffindor," grumbled Draco, stirring his stew.

Ginny only smiled proudly before leaning forward, back to business. "Hermione seems to be displaying all typical symptoms of being affected by a soul bond, but Sirius doesn't seem to be mirroring those effects, so this could mean two things."

Draco swirled his spoon in his stew as Padma tried to shoot him pointed looks that he ignored.

"One, it could mean that their souls aren't bonded and he's just incredibly perceptive to be able to glean that something's wrong from letters alone," continued Ginny. "Or two, the reason why doesn't have similar symptoms as Hermione is because he's feeding off her life force, getting stronger while she's getting weaker."

Only because she was paying very close attention to the behaviors of the two oath-bound specialists did she notice the way Draco's eyes widened marginally.

"How do you know anything about soul bonds?" asked Padma.

Remembering that neither of them were aware of her tumultuous first year at Hogwarts, Ginny gave them a quick run-through of her experience with the sixteen year old Lord Voldemort, leaving Draco looking a bit green and Padma horrified.

"And I've occasionally satisfied my curiosities about soul bonds with what I could find from the library, and even Dumbledore indulged some of my requests and lent me a few from his private collection, so I'm not wholly ignorant about the subject," she said, taking a bite from the roll.

"If you're already got your suspicions and your research, why've you demanded for us to meet you here?" asked Draco, taking a dainty-but-manly sip of his stew.

"For one thing, even if we didn't have a gag order, we wouldn't have definitive facts about what's going on because neither of us have access to Hermione's work," said Padma, drumming her violet-colored nails on the wooden table.

Ginny picked up on the way Draco didn't look up.

"All we can do is voice our own suspicions, and even then, there's not a lot that I can say considering my placement. "

"In the Love Chamber. I know, Padma, don't worry." She waved off Padma's shellshocked expression. "We've gotten quite good at deducing where Unspeakables are assigned these days, so it's not a weakness on your part."

"Who is 'we?'" asked Draco.

"Bill, Charlie, George, Angelina, Fleur," answered Ginny, finishing off the roll. "Are you going to drink that water?"

"Be my guest," he said, pushing the untouched water glass closer to the pregnant witch.

Padma sighed in defeat. "Why isn't she with you?"

"Victoire is feeling a bit under the weather, the poor little munchkin," said Ginny. "But George is finishing up with a few customers. He should be dropping by—"

"I've dropped," announced a second male voice right before he plopped down next to Draco with a devilish smile and slung an arm around the younger man's shoulder. "Hello, Padma, my lovely lotus blossom." He turned to Draco and winked. "Git."

"Twit," replied Draco, shrugging out from under George's arm. "How did you become part of this?"

"You don't become a world-renown inventor without some measure of intelligence," answered George, batting his eyelashes coquettishly and leaning his head against Draco's shoulder. "So, is there anything you two can lie around your tongues about?"

"I don't know about lying," said Draco, eyes fixed on his seemingly fascinating stew, "but I can tell you that there aren't only two options about what's happening to Granger."

Even Padma raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, mate, the mysterious allure only works for people who aren't ponces," said George.

Draco ignored him. "While my dear cousin may have a bond with Granger, it might not be as strong as a bond she could share with someone else."

Ginny, George, and Padma balked at him.

"Who else could there be?!"

"Still being a ponce, arsehole!"

"What bond, Draco?!"


	6. Yearning

**Sit tight, y'all. This is gonna be a bit of a long one.**

 **6.  
Yearning**

* * *

Hermione rolled her neck, taking some mild satisfaction from the pops and cracks. It didn't do a thing to alleviate the ever-present tension in her shoulders, but the habit was comfort enough.

She'd bowed out of work early, but that was more of an issue of semantics. "Early" was two in the afternoon on a typical workday, but technically she'd bowed out of work "late" if only because she hadn't actually gone home the night before. She'd been up half the night laughing with Cedric about the various antics of the most interesting characters in their respective houses. The other half of the night was spent combing through books and ancient documents to corroborate her findings and doing actual work.

When she threw out an offhand comment about how she'd have to get breakfast before continuing, Cedric had blown up, lectured her, and kicked her out of the Death Chamber, holding some of his research answers ransom. She conceded without much of a fight.

While she wasn't stumbling down the hallway of her building, she could tell she'd put off coming home entirely too long as she yawned and came to her baby blue front door, leaning against the frame to fish around in her purse for her keys. As she slid the cold metal into the lock, she felt wrong. Several of the protective wards she'd erected were still her own, but others were clearly keyed to another magical essence. When she recognized the benign signature, she was surprised, pleased, and more than a bit irritated.

Hermione pushed open her door, dropped her keys into the pale green ceramic bowl, hung her robes on the hook, and dropped her bag on her couch before calling out, "Sirius Orion Black the Second! How in the hell do you keep managing to break into my fl—"

She'd barely rounded the corner from her living room into her kitchen when she glimpsed a forkful of some unidentifiable substance flying into her open mouth. It'd hardly touched her tongue when an explosion of flavor hit, and she closed her mouth and chewed, eyes falling shut in bliss.

Sirius poked his head out from around the doorway with a devilish grin. "Majestic, innit?"

He'd trimmed his hair. It suited him.

"Delicious," mumbled Hermione, pulling the fork from between her lips and shaking her head. The eggplant, ground beef, Béchamel sauce—it was ambrosia of the gods. "That is by far the best _moussaka_ I've tasted."

"As it should be," he sad proudly, stepping out from behind the wall and showing off the frilly, polka-dot apron that Hermione most certainly did not have anywhere in her flat. "Came straight from Greece itself."

Hermione moaned. "You learned Greek recipes?"

He tugged her into a hug that she tried to reciprocate as he simultaneous dragged her deeper into her kitchen, where there was a veritable feast half-done and spread out all over her kitchen table and counters.

"I met an angel in a taverna in Wizarding Olympia—she was nigh on a hundred-and-twenty, but the woman ran around as spry as Molly Weasley—and she insisted on hauling me back into her kitchens and showing me how to cook some basic Greek dishes," he said, touring her around the countertops and the stove. "Called me a disgrace for not knowing them, actually, though I barely have a few licks of Hellenic blood in me."

Hermione practically drooled all over herself as he ushered her around the grilled octopus, fresh steamed fish, _saganaki_ , _tzatziki_ , _spanakopita_ , _dolmades_ , _pastitso_ , and the dish that nearly had her eyes rolling into the back of her head— _souvlaki_ , a perfectly seasoned and tender meat. He'd even included a few desserts like _loukomades_ and yogurt with honey.

"Not that I mind coming home to a full-course meal, but what are you doing, Sirius?" she asked around a mouthful of _souvlaki_. He'd given her a full stick of the meat and she was contentedly devouring it, sitting on one of her bar stools.

He levitated another set of _souvlaki_ from the oven and sniffed appreciatively. "I'm so good at this."

Hermione chuckled. "Humble."

"Being humble often means lying, Hermione. Would you rather I lie?" he chided, throwing her the best angelic expression he could—which wasn't angelic at all. He levitated the new sticks onto the platter on the kitchen island and winked at her. "Anyway, all this is happening in your kitchen because I owled Molly, Ginny, and Fleur to tell them you were hosting my welcome home dinner."

She choked on a new bite of the meat she'd taken. "What?!"

"Well, Molly deserves a reprieve from playing caterer all the time, and Ginny shouldn't be doing much of anything what with how she's liable to give birth in the middle of making a bloody salad, and Fleur—well, let's leave her out of the kitchen. Not every French person knows their way around food," he said.

"She knows how to make spaghetti quite well, excuse you."

"If she'd bloody branch out from that, I'll give her more credit." He set cast a warming charm on the souvlaki and set the platter aside. "And frankly, doing it here is the only way to ensure your attendance."

Hermione cringed and studied the colorful, embroidered flowers on a pair of her oven mitts as she slowly started to tug her hair from its braid. "All right—what have the others told you?"

"That they've seen even less of you since I left than before I came back," he replied sourly, his hands on his hips. Then he sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the countertop as he stared at her. "And they've also said that you're so much more engaged these days when you actually are spending time with your mates, but only when they manage to get you out of the Department of Mysteries."

Hermione frowned, marveling that her behavior with her friends had been different enough to warrant notice. Granted, ever since her success with Sirius, she hadn't been as melancholy, worried that her life was literally and figuratively leading her to death, and she wasn't nearly as consumed with her research as before.

"Maybe bringing me back to life brought you back a bit too," he offered, shrugging and turning to the other dishes in front of him. "You're a little more cheerful, a little more hopeful, a little more alive."

She nodded, although unconvinced.

"Look, Hermione," he said, coming around the counter to haul her into a hug, holding her head against his chest so her cheek was uncomfortably smushed against his heart.

"Erm, Sirius—"

"I'm going to channel a bit of Longbottom and also let my natural essence come through—"

"What?"

"I'm going to be _Frank_ and _Sirius_ with you, love," he answered, dramatically grave as he clutched her tighter. "I can feel that something's not right. It might be all the life debts I owe you or something else, but something feels off when I think of you—does that make sense?"

Hermione sighed and went along with the hug since she didn't know what else to do with her arms anyway. Despite his unnecessary drama, there was something genuine in his words that had her brain whirring.

"We're bonded," she muttered, a bit muffled considering the placement of her face, but still audible enough for Sirius to hum contemplatively.

"Unsurprisingly, really," he said. He curled a lock of her hair around his finger. "But regardless of that, I can feel that something's not quite right. Maybe that's why you look like the walking dead."

"You certainly know how to flatter a woman."

"That was me trying to flatter you," he said. "I was being mild. You look like death."

Hermione tried to scowl, but she couldn't do it very well. "Well, if you're done insulting my appearance—"

"I wouldn't be emphasizing it if you didn't bloody look like you had a foot in the Veil already," he said. "It doesn't take a magical bond to see that your health seems to be suffering."

"I'm overworked," said Hermione. "I've been busy doing follow-up research."

"With Diggory?"

"He's been a giant help, yes. I've been practically harassing him for information and trying to get as much out of him before something happens and he can't come through anymore. That's what I've been doing all this time."

Sirius yanked her back, grinning. Though it wasn't devilish in any way, its sweetness was so much more worrying. "Which is why I did you a favor and scheduled a checkup with your Healer—just to make sure everything's working right—since you don't have time to do it yourself."

Hermione glared at him.

He cupped her face in his hands, smushing her cheeks again. "Be careful, Hermione," he said softly, and she suspended her irritation upon seeing the sincerity in his steely grey eyes.

"I know, Sirius. I'm not going to fall into the Veil—"

He shook his head and leveled her with a look as grave as his name. "There are other things hanging in the balance, love. The Veil's not the only thing you can fall into."

A bright, white light flashed into the kitchen, and Sirius and Hermione turned to the large, silvery stag. It threw its head back and opened its mouth, filling the room with Harry's shrill voice.

"Ginny's having the baby! Get your arses over here!"

* * *

The second Baby Potter was born late that same evening, only minutes 'til midnight.

The story was that Teddy had made a bet with his godfather. If Ginny could give birth in less than nine hours, since the eight-year-old believed strongly that his adoptive godmother was that strong, then he would be the one to choose the new baby's name. Any later than nine hours, and Harry and Ginny would have their say in their child's name. Harry, having read enough books that Hermione had thrown at him during one particular meltdown, humored his godson and accepted the bet. He believed his wife strong and capable, but she was still only a second-time mother. Even Molly had barely clocked ten and half hours on her seventh child.

However, Ginny had come through for the blue and black haired little boy, and Remus Arthur Potter was born on Friday, the 17th of February in 2006.

The truth was that Sirius had put his cousin up to the task, and Ginny was more than happy to jump onto the bandwagon. The _cosmic_ truth, Sirius had muttered in Hermione's ear as the parents of the squirming newborn cooed over their child, was that the baby was aware of the bet and simply refused to be named anything even _sounding_ like Albus Severus and had gone easy on his poor mother to make the birth relatively quick.

Hermione had laughed and thanked every deity in existence that Harry had been more than amenable to the change, deciding that naming his second son after two other father figures was wiser. Sirius had done his best to give a non-bitter and level-headed opinion that naming a child after a manipulative old man and a professor who'd tormented him during his formative years was neither audibly nor thoughtfully appealing, no matter how brave and good their actions had proved by the end.

Hermione had thanked Sirius as they watched the little family cuddle close, Teddy holding the new baby carefully while Jamie blinked at his little brother curiously, Harry and Ginny watching on happily. Sirius had shrugged it off and then turned to her with an evil grin.

"So, we're in St. Mungo's, Granger, and I know for a fact that my cousin works late nights so he doesn't have to come in early. I'm fairly sure you can bump your appointment to an earlier date, wouldn't you say?"

So that was how Hermione wound up back on the cream-colored examination chair in the examination room with the pale green walls and maple-wood trim and the wide portrait of a landscape somewhere in the mountains.

Draco's wand hummed as it emitted the soft, grey light that pulsed around Hermione.

He cleared his throat. "So."

She hummed, nodding.

"What brings you here at—" He glanced at his watch. "—at half-past midnight?"

"Ginny had her baby, and Sirius made me come to the appointment he scheduled since we were already here. And I suppose he wanted answers to my…erm, condition sooner than later."

"So Potterette had her second?" he asked lightly—awkwardly. Malfoy making small talk was something Hermione would have to get used to.

"Yes. Little Remus Arthur."

Draco grimaced a bit.

Hermione cocked an eyebrow. "Trust me, that's loads better than Albus Severus."

"Fucking hell," muttered Draco, cringing as he continued to scan her. "Who came up with that?"

"I wish I could say Harry was drunk, but he was painfully sober. I blame Ginny's hormones for agreeing with him."

"Well, Potterling Number Two dodged quite a hex," he muttered, shaking his head. "Good for him."

The light around her pulsed again, stronger and brighter before it dimmed so dark that it nearly sucked the light from the room.

"Just as I thought," muttered Draco, holstering his wand again. His tone had switched from stilted to gruff as he tossed her file onto the nearby countertop and wiped his hands down his face. "Your soul is still being drained, Granger. Would you like to explain?"

Hermione frowned as she studied her hands, though the light from the spell had faded already and the room had returned to its normal brightness. She sat up straighter, making the thin paper crackle in the heavy silence. Apparently, it wasn't a rhetorical question.

"I—I don't know," she muttered, shaking her head. "I haven't tried to perform any new rituals since Sirius—"

He glared at her, the template of his expression so similar to that of his cousin's that Hermione was torn between chastisement and irritation. She chose to follow the latter.

She slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder again and prepared to slide off the edge. "Draco, I don't need you to—"

"Keep telling me about things you don't need, Granger, and I'll show you exactly why you need to stop mucking about in the Death Chamber," he murmured so softly that she stopped moving and stared at him. He motioned to her general person, his hand moving up and down. _"Exhibit A."_

She gripped the leather strap tightly. "This is my job."

"No, your job is to research the Veil and its connections to the realm of the dead," he said, reciting the parameters of her position almost verbatim from her file, "not experiment and attempt to bring anyone back."

Hermione held her tongue, doing her best to reign in her temper since Draco already seemed on the verge of unleashing his own. Again. She'd managed a nap during Ginny's labor, but it still wasn't enough to ease the ever-present ache and fatigue that seemed to have coated her bones since bringing Sirius back.

"I don't understand what goes through your mind, Granger," he said, almost to himself. "I blame it on proximity. Just like how if you work as a Healer, you think you're almost impervious to diseases because of how you're familiar to the field. Maybe because you're researching death and souls when your eyes are open, you close those eyes and think that yours is untouchable—in some sort of sterile room where it's invulnerable."

She shook her head, opening her mouth to retort, when he held up his hand.

"When I tell you that your soul's drained, that your magical core is exhausted, how serious do you think that is?" he asked. His voice was dangerously soft as he dropped onto the rolling stool and rubbed his forehead. "Because I feel like in the three times I've told you what you were doing to yourself, you brush it off like a mild illness you can take some sort of specialized potion for and be on your way."

She didn't answer. Not because she had a shortage of responses, but because she was too busy watching his dark expression and hearing his soft voice to cut him off with words he'd ignore anyway. Even if they managed to start seeing each other outside of professional capacities and become friends, it would take Hermione a long time to get used to seeing Draco angry but without a sneer, to hear him speaking in anger but without the biting edge of hatred and arrogance.

He chuckled darkly and scored his fingers through his hair, strands falling out of place in their wake. "It's like being a kid again and seeing death as this far-off phenomenon—like feeling immortal, until you're not."

Hermione swallowed, her throat dry. Her skin prickled. His grey eyes had dark blue flecks.

"Your body is the machine, Granger," he said. "Your soul is the purpose of the machine, what gives it meaning and value. Do you understand?"

She didn't answer.

"Your magical core is not just what gives you magic, it's what gives you life. It fuels your body just as much as nutrients," he continued. "Exhausting your core doesn't mean you lose your magic. It means you die."

Hermione shifted barely an inch, and the paper crackled loudly.

"Draining your soul doesn't mean you just feel like your entire body is aching in spite of feeling currents of energy running through it," he said. "It means you're jogging toward an outcome much like the Dementor's Kiss—but without the Dementor, the Kiss, and having your soul sucked out. It _shrivels_ inside you."

He braced his hands on his knees and cleared his throat before tilting his head left and right, stretching his neck and shoulders like she'd done so many hours earlier. His dark red tie was loose, the top button of his white shirt undone. His Healer robes had probably been left behind in his office.

"Do you understand a little better why I think you're being foolish?"

"I've been there for years," she murmured softly, not wanting to go above the volume he'd set in the room but also because she couldn't bring her voice any higher. "I don't understand why you're getting these readings now."

Draco shook his head and sighed. "You're actually going to make someone spell it out for you, aren't you?" he asked. "You didn't even think about what I'd said before, that last time you were found unconscious?"

She licked her dry lips. Cold seeped into her fingers, and heat rose around the edges of her face.

"The Veil…summons that for which your heart yearns," he said softly, sounding more tired than angry at that point. "You ever wonder why, out of all bloody dead people in the world, you summoned Cedric Diggory in the Veil?"

Hermione couldn't swallow anymore.

"I had my suspicions when he was there to help us bring back Black, but seeing you here like this—I'm certain of it now," he said. "Do you know why I got this position? The closest civilian position to the Department of Mysteries without flat-out working in it?"

"The Black and Malfoy libraries," she answered quietly.

"There're several books in it dedicated to talking about death, but only one of them mentions the Veil," he said. "It didn't give concrete answers to any questions, but the author took about three chapters to imply something interesting."

Hermione leaned her hip against the chair, unwilling to sit back in it and give him the satisfaction, but also because her arms were too tired to boost herself back up.

"He was the one who suggested that the Veil was nothing more than a death version of the Mirror of Erised. I thought it would've been like the Resurrection Stone—from that bloody Deathly Hallows story from Beedle the Bard. But I realized it wasn't like the stone because you couldn't willy-nilly ask for anyone back. With the Veil, it's a request straight from the soul."

"That's why it's been draining me," she said, her eyes fixed on the pale tiles of the floor. "But if it summons what I yearn for, the others would've been able to come as well. I've—"

"You're watering down the term," said Draco. "You _wanted_ to see them. You desired it, but you didn't _yearn_ for them. Not the way that you—"

"By all means, lecture me on the nuances of the English language—"

"Granger, pipe down. I'm not trying to give you a lesson in semantics. You _mourned_ everyone, you wished to the very bottom of your bottomless bleeding heart that you could bring them back to their loved ones for their own sakes, but you were never able to summon them the way you did Diggory. My point is that there is something fundamentally different about the way you want Cedric Diggory to come back, and it's related to the theory of the Mirror of Erised's similarity to the Veil."

She balked at him, eyes wide and indignant, in spite of the cool water rushing inside that told her that whatever he was suggesting was very close to a truth she hadn't considered. Or rather, one she had avoided considering. "Are you saying—"

"You managed to summon the boy because you're connected to him by virtue of being soul mates."

Hermione leaned her arm against the chair to support herself better.

"I also think it's got something to do with the fact that his death was practically the catalyst for the Second War," added Draco. "You were mourning him, yearning for him, and wishing he hadn't died. And then he appeared."

She should've been more afraid that he was so spot-on in his theories, but she was too busy feeling the deep ache in her chest.

"And you went and fell for him."

She finally looked up and met his eyes again. "Pardon?" she breathed.

"You heard me," he said firmly, eyes unwaveringly fixed on hers. "You may look ill, but your demeanor has shifted from what I saw of it before. You might not be…happier, but you've brightened up significantly. And from what Black told me, it's not because you're spending less time in that glorified crypt."

"I haven't fallen for Cedric Diggory," she said, glowering at him.

He didn't look like he believed her at all, but he just shrugged. "Perhaps not, but you've gotten attached."

"I'm trying to find other means to pull out people from the Veil, Draco," she growled. "Will you fault me for using Cedric as a resource?"

"No," he answered. "I'm faulting you for entertaining any sort of inclinations toward him. I can see it written all over your face, woman. You've gone and literally fallen for a dead man."

Lips pursed, Hermione gathered her strength and gripped her purse again. Then without another word, she stormed out of the examination room. She could barely remember making her way back to her flat, but she mustered enough of her willpower to send all of Sirius's food to Grimmauld Place, kick off her shoes, and pass out on her sofa.

* * *

Perhaps Hermione's return to the Death Chamber the day after Remus Arthur's birth played too close to Draco's theory. It was still her job, after all. It was what she was paid to do and had made a commitment to do. If it meant interacting with Cedric more often, then it was genuinely no hardship to her.

So what if she'd entertained the thought of having gone to the ball with him, of having accepted a date, of having been closer to him while he'd still been there? Could she be faulted for wonder _what if_ , for having an imagination?

Hermione Granger was twenty-five bloody years old, and Cedric Diggory was a deceased seventeen-year-old. She knew full well there was no future. If doing something over and over, expecting a different outcome, was insanity, then what was the point of cleaning anything when it would inevitably be dirty again? People simply tended to fantasize about brighter alternatives.

"Hermione?"

She looked up from her notes, meeting Cedric's gaze as he sat in front of her again, a contemplative moue on his lips instead of his characteristic smile. It was strange that she considered the expression to be his default considering he really wasn't smiling all the time. it just felt to her that regardless if his lips were downturned or in a straight line, there was always a lift to them that lurked under the surface. That time, however, she saw no trace of good humor.

"I think I've answered at least twelve feet of parchment's worth of questions about anything and everything related to the Veil and death itself," he continued, a small smile appearing though she could tell it was only for delivery's sake. "You've even relocated half your office down here, so consider this your favor back to me."

Hermione nodded. "What is it?"

"Why do you keep summoning me?"

"What?"

Cedric drummed his fingers on his knee before pushing himself up to pace along the three feet's worth of space allowed him in the doorway of the arch. "So, we've fetched Sirius, and I've explained how we've no other chances of retrieving anyone else who's fallen through the Veil because of the lack of tethers. What do you still need me for? I mean—apart from being an invaluable library-like resource—"

She knew he was reaching for something, but she wasn't going to help him get to it.

Perhaps it was out of guilt or shame or fear—but it was a question that'd been lingering in the air around them every time he looked at her a certain way or unconsciously reached out to touch her before smoothly masking it by brushing lint off his shoulder or running his hands through his hair. Or hypothesizing about their life together if they'd dated. Jokingly begun or not, Cedric was treading in deep waters that she was sure neither of them could survive.

"I'm sorry for making you feel like a database," said Hermione, "but you must understand why I'm—why I've been trying to keep you tethered here. You're the only one I can summon, the only one I've managed to contact after years of research—"

"Still making me feel literally objectified, Granger," chuckled Cedric. "Listen, it's all right. I understand, and honestly, it's not like I've got much else to do. I just—oh, hell. I'm wondering if that's all there is to it."

"Cedric, it's been a privilege to have a second chance to get to know you," she said, "and I'm sorry I didn't take the opportunity back when…"

"Back when something more tangible could've come out of it apart from a correspondence between planes of existence?" Cedric snorted and shook his head. "Regretting your hypothetical rejection of my hypothetical offer to be my date to the Yule Ball?"

She sighed. "Regretting never taking the chance to have more than one decent conversation with you, you twit, but now that sentiment might change if you keep pursuing our hypothetical-but-still-unlikely relationship."

Cedric laughed and shifted his position to rest his elbows on his knees, fiddling with the wrist cuff of his uniform. Hermione watched him for a long second—the age that settled on his behavior in spite of his timeless youth—and then turned back to her research, futile as it was. She could have spent seconds or hours staring at the black squiggles on the parchment. She wasn't sure. But she'd rather take the sudden absence of traceable time than the fluttering in her stomach which could've been relief or dread when he broke the silence again.

"Granger, do you believe in alternate timelines?"

She looked up, but he was fixed on his cuff again, rubbing the fabric between his fingertips as he leaned against the archway. "Are you asking if I believe it as a part of reality or as a soul-deep feeling that may as well be real for all we know of it?"

"Real or damn-close-to-real?" he asked, an eyebrow cocked. "Isn't that part of the question?"

Unsettled by the look in his eyes, Hermione swallowed and shook her head. "I think that's a terrible thing to dwell on."

He shrugged. "What's the harm? I'm dead already."

"There are worse things," she said. "Dwelling on _what-if_ 's certainly count as one of them."

He crossed his arms over his chest and fixed her with a stare that made her put her research aside—eyes connecting, warm chocolate and misty stone. She knew it wasn't just a question, but she'd learned a while ago that it was difficult to resist him, as a favor to a dead man or even to deny Cedric Diggory in general.

"The world isn't flat, people aren't two-dimensional, and the Earth is just another revolving rock in a universe whose limits are further than we can imagine," she said, hugging her knees closer to her chest and tearing her eyes away from his to talk to the floor. "Time is as nonlinear as life. I think we forget that just because we try to run it as a race to a finish line that we dread or await doesn't mean it's as defined a pathway as the metaphor connotes. Time is as multifaceted as our decisions, so, yes, I believe that there are parallel timelines, infinite as the choices we could've made."

Cedric nodded, ducking his head to shift imaginary dirt under his foot. "And so in some parallel timeline, I would've asked you to the Yule Ball and you would've said yes."

Hermione rallied any sort of acting ability in her arsenal to laugh, trying to steer the conversation back into the joke Cedric clearly wasn't making. "You're relentless, Diggory."

And with all the seriousness and gravity the Death Chamber was meant to have, he said, "And you're more than I could've ever imagined you to be."

Hermione's breath hitched. The silence roared in her ears.

"I knew your reputation of being bookish and a bit bossy, but I also knew it was because you were curious and passionate and a bleeding heart to the very core. You didn't fuss with things you simply weren't interested in because you had other things to do. You didn't want to prove yourself to the Wizarding World to dethrone discrimination or stereotypes, but rather because you wanted to _stay_ in the world, not to be pushed out."

The seventeen year old Quidditch captain and Triwizard Champion seemed to fade as he focused intently on her. She saw instead the man he didn't have the chance to be, and it broke her heart.

"You know why I didn't ask you to the ball, Granger?"

She bit her lip to keep from trembling, her grip on her legs tightening into numbness.

"Because you intimidated the ever-loving shite out of me. You were two years below, and I was afraid to talk to you because I didn't want to sound stupid in front of you," he said. "And if even if I managed to convince you that I wasn't an idiot or a stupid boy trying to play a prank on you, I knew you'd never agree to be my date because you didn't want that kind of attention."

Hermione was biting both upper and lower lip at that point, her mouth disappearing in a straight line.

"But then you agreed to Krum, and I just—I knew I'd missed my chance. Everything happened so fast after that—what with the Second Task and that Skeeter woman and poor Harry and Crouch and…" He shook his head. "In every timeline that I didn't ask you, I know I would've regretted it immensely. Because I do. Even if I had survived that night in the graveyard, I think I would've known that things between Cho and me wouldn't have worked out and I would've come to certain realizations about you."

He was standing, staring at her pleadingly, as if he focused on her hard enough, he'd be able to manifest and step closer. And all she could do was sit there, surrounded by her bloody wall of books and research and all the theories in the world that couldn't help either of them. Hermione tried to tear her eyes away, but he'd caught her in a magnetic field—an orbit that kept her from fleeing but also kept her from getting any closer, trapped.

"And I—I'm not saying this because I want you to let me go, Hermione," he said, dropping down to his knees so they were nearly eye-level. "I'm saying it because you're literally all I'm living for right now. When I'm not here with you—being interrogated or harassing you or teasing you or getting lectured by you on something that could be as boring as carpet but sounding more fascinating than the cosmos because you're the one saying it all—I'm just…floating along. I meet others, but it's like talking to people through a haze of smoke or water. I nee—" He cut himself off and shook his head.

Hermione couldn't stop the tears anymore. They erupted from her chest, searing their way through her throat, imploding. They burned in her eyes, warmed her lips, and cooled her sleeveless arms as she hugged herself tighter.

"I reckon that's why I'm dead in this timeline," he mused, a small laugh riding an exhale. "Because I didn't have you in my life."

The seal of her lips broke as she dragged in a heavy breath, turning away to blink away the rest of her tears.

He sat down again, with a _whump_ of defeat. "I'm sorry. I didn't—"

"I didn't stop you," she said, her voice cracking through words and muting a few syllables.

Hermione saw the defeat fade out of his posture, even though he didn't move. "What?"

The truth was that she could've stopped him. She could've opened her mouth to cut him off or faked an emergency that allowed her to run out of the room. She could've even redirected the conversation, inferring that any sort of connection between them should be let go.

"I didn't stop you," she said, wiping her cheeks with her knuckles. "I wanted to hear you say…"

"That I have feelings for you?" he muttered softly, gently, his voice warming the air around her, but not enough to dispel the chill that settled on her bones again.

She shrugged. "That pointless and painful as they may be, mine are reciprocated."

He smiled. "You've must've known," he said, warmth and sadness suffusing his words. "You called, and I'm the only one who could've answered."

Yearning, she thought, was a horribly apt word because it was so strong and so futile.

* * *

When it became clear that Hermione had no intention of opening the door, let alone coming inside or knocking, Sirius opened the front door to Grimmauld Place for her. She stood on the front step, her arms braced against the doorframe, her eyes closed as she breathed slowly. He slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned a shoulder against the open door.

"Evening, love," he said. "Harry and Ginny've gone to Hogwarts to show off their kiddies, so I'm here…"

Hermione's Unspeakable robes hung off one shoulder, her messenger bag on the other. The knees of her navy pinstripe pantsuit were dusty and smeared. Her hair was falling out of the long, loose braid, the hair tie missing, and the spare on her wrist forgotten. When she opened her eyes and looked up at Sirius, they were bloodshot, tired, and seemed older than the house itself.

"Have you ever heard of the philosopher William James?" she asked, her voice hoarse and cracked from crying.

Sirius's cocked his head to the side. "The wizard in the eighteen-hundreds?"

Hermione blinked. "He was a wizard?"

Sirius nodded. "Aye. American. Foremost leading expert on time travel theory. Speculated on the multi—"

"The multiverse," whispered Hermione, her voice tapering off into fresh tears.

Sirius cleared his throat and ushered Hermione into the manor. "This is a conversation best served with hard liquor and tissues." Hermione suddenly let out a thick sob that she couldn't hold back. "Or a towel."

He towed her first to the kitchen, where he fixed her a hot toddy and tried to force-feed her biscuits to build any sort of strength that her tears might have sapped, but when that didn't work, he nearly carried her into the library. The atmosphere and the presence of the books seemed to alleviate some of her sorrow, as her sobs quieted enough to keep her from hiccupping into the drink.

Sirius sat beside her, leg tucked under the other as he faced her with an arm slung around the back of the couch and a tissue box in his other hand. When she sat there blankly, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against her temple—a gesture so dog-like that she reached out and patted his hair.

"Now, darling," he said, nudging her a little. "Are you going to tell me why you're torturing yourself by dwelling on alternate timelines?"

Hermione only shook her head and sniffled, leaning closer to him and inhaling the faint warm scent of cigar smoke and soap. "Madness—an occupational hazard."

"No, princess, there is madness borne of obsession and then there is madness borne of love," he said, leaning back away from her face. "And finally, there is sadness borne of the multifaceted madness of the question _what if_."

Hermione looked up at him, head still shaking as her lip and the cup in her hands trembled. "It's easier to pretend."

Sirius set the tissue box down between them and brushed her hair out of her face, tucking stray locks behind her ears. "You know, Harry told me about the Hallows." He pulled out her loose braid as he began to do her hair again. "He mentioned that all three of you chose differently about which was the most valuable."

"Ron chose the wand, Harry the stone, and I the cloak," she said quietly.

"The wand showed a demand to fight Death, the stone showed the desire to subordinate Death, and the cloak showed a desire to hide from Death," said Sirius, taking her hand to slide her spare hair tie off her wrist to tie off her hair. "The last is a wise decision, but they all lead to the same inevitability." He took her hands again and kissed her knuckles, his mustache and beard tickling her dry skin.

"Death," she said flatly, sniffling again.

"We can pretend all we want and imagine ourselves with our loved ones long gone in a life long erased. And perhaps, in other lives or times, those imaginings are real, but we shouldn't live in hypotheticals."

Hermione's tears ran anew, and she dropped onto Sirius's shoulder, her sobs quaking even through him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

Hermione let herself be comforted by his embrace for several minutes, tucking her forehead against his neck and curling into him. "He's my soul mate, you know," she said into the expensive silk of his shirt. "Even Draco said so. It's why he's the only one I can summon in the Veil."

She couldn't see his face, but she could almost hear Sirius's eyebrows rise and his lips disappear into a straight line.

"Well…" He sighed. "That's bloody horrible."

Hermione laughed thickly, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand until Sirius stopped her and brushed them off with his thumbs.

"This is it then," she said. "This is our darkest timeline."

"I would imagine that to be a timeline where Voldemort conquers all."

"I mean, relative to our situation," she amended with a wince. "Now I don't even have the ignorance to be blissfully unaware of who he was meant to be for me, and here I am with the apparatus and the experience to bring someone back from the Veil but he's one person I can't bring back."

Sirius nodded understandingly, though they slowed and then began to take a more horizontal bob. "I would actually phrase that differently then."

She lifted her head off his shoulder to peer at him.

"The darkest timeline," he mused, "or the _Blackest_ timeline…" When Hermione shot him an incredulous look, he winked. " _I'm_ here, aren't I? And the little Malfoy git is half-Black and he's friendly with you."

Hermione laughed thickly, through the tears that suddenly wouldn't stop falling.

"It's true, love," he said, smoothing her hair down. "Without Diggory's interference from the other side, I wouldn't be back, and you wouldn't have managed to find an excuse to patch things up with Malfoy."

Hermione tried to wipe her eyes again, but it didn't do much but put a break between the streams.

"Now, that's not to disregard the plethora of other universes that had things playing out differently," he continued. "Hell, maybe you, me, Malfoy, and Diggory are all sitting around playing poker, but we can't live life comparing it to the bloody multiverse. All we have is here and now, and it's how we perceive our present that matters most."

Hermione swallowed and took a deep breath. "You're right."

"Of course I am," he sniffed, his chin taking on a haughty lift.

She pinched his side. Sirius laughed and patted her back before leaning against the couch to get comfortable, still holding her tight against him.

"It's a nice thought—another world out there where we're all together and happy. Where there was no bloody lunatic who looked like he fucked up a snake Animagus transformation, where a rat didn't live up to its stereotype, and where the Marauders were able to live and have families of their own to pass on their legacy."

He rested his chin on the top of her head and sighed, rubbing her back again.

"It's a comforting thought, but I know that no matter the universe or timeline, we love each other enough to know that if the positions were reversed, we would want each other to live the happiest lives possible," he continued, his voice dropping the lightheartedness he'd used to try to lift her spirits. "We honor those we've lost by respecting their memories and not using it as an excuse to die alive."


End file.
